


This Year

by hannah_baker



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2018-2019 NHL Season, Come play, Dylan isn't a hockey player, Explicit Sex, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, M/M, Sex Toys, the pain of trying to carry your entire team on your shoulders and still not making playoffs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-02-08 13:02:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 48,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18623815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannah_baker/pseuds/hannah_baker
Summary: Dylan Strome had the job opportunity he never would have dreamed of right out of college. Spend one year being Connor McDavid's...babysitter, for lack of a better word, and get springboarded into the job of his dreams with the Leafs. A regular Devil-Wears-Prada, if you will. Connor is supposed to be difficult and cold, and Dylan only hopes to survive the year.But maybe Connor never needed someone to be his keeper. Maybe he just needed someone to be his friend.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on this season (2018-19) but I’ve taken my liberties. I’ve left out big devastating things because there is literally no room for all the misery Connor has been through this season, and also because this season was so fucking long. I also chose to give Connor a happy ending instead of the sad one he actually got because #ArtisticLicense. The Oilers started the real 2018-19 season overseas. I, however, forgot about that. So I cut it. Fiction. 
> 
> I watched so many post-games, referred heavily to the schedule of games they lost. I researched things. This fic has taken over my life for what felt like a thousand years. This is why I usually write AU haha. 
> 
> Thank you Jillian for brainstorming with me, beta reading, and fixing my plot at every turn <3 This fic wouldn't exist without you. 
> 
> Title from This Year by the Mountain Goats. 
> 
> This fic is done! I'm posting in four parts. I'll update on Saturdays because that's realistic for me since it's about 48k total.

_“Every 22 year old is some kind of idiot.” -John Oliver_

 

Dylan took a deep breath before he knocked on the door in front of him. The house was huge but that was to be expected. It was the prince of Edmonton’s house. And Dylan was there to be his keeper. 

 

As a marketing and PR student, he hadn’t thought he’d get a job after graduation being a glorified babysitter. But this was supposed to be a Devil Wears Prada-esque stepping stone. It would be a hard year, but a jump-off point to what would turn into an incredible career. Or, at least that’s what was promised when his uncle pulled some strings—incredible strings—for him to even get this job. Since Dylan had realized he’d never be a professional hockey player himself, he set his eyes on working in hockey. Working for the Leafs specifically, and with his new boss’ connections, this job would launch him there. 

 

Dylan had been in a thousand meetings about this. About Connor McDavid. It was a bunch of old white men (and one woman) in a room, talking about McDavid like he wasn’t a person. Like he was a company or an investment. A resource to mine. 

 

_ “He’s a product,” it was explained to Dylan. “A product of the Oilers, of the NHL, of BioSteel, of CCM. He’s a product and our greatest investment. And you’re going to protect that investment.”  _

 

It was clear that “protecting the investment” meant controlling Connor. Everything from what he wore to what he ate to who he spent time with and what he posted on social media was now officially Dylan’s job to look after. He had the login to Connor’s public Instagram account and a list of foods that were, under no circumstances, to be allowed inside this house, like red licorice and Froot Loops. 

 

Dylan took a breath and knocked. 

 

When Connor answered the door, he was soft summer sunshine on a neutral face. Dylan’s breath caught. Dylan was a Toronto kid. He’d never given much thought to McDavid outside of the usual ‘is he actually that good’ conversation that passed around the edges of any hockey fan’s general discourse. Dylan hadn’t really realized that Connor McDavid, in a loose t-shirt and basketball shorts, was kind of a babe. 

 

“You’re Dylan?” Connor said, opening the door to let him in. Dylan had been told a lot of things about Connor. Mostly that he was a polite, aloof kid and liked to be left alone. Dylan wasn’t surprised by that. Who would want their babysitter breathing down their neck? Who would want to be pals?

 

“Yeah,” Dylan said, shaking Connor’s hand. Connor used his free hand to push his hair back, and Dylan noticed it really was getting long. That was the first thing on his to-do list, actually. It had been discussed at length in meetings. Primarily by Connor’s dad, who had a position on what Dylan called  _ Connor’s Team _ in his head. Make Connor get a haircut before the season started for real. That was agreed upon. Connor had short hair. Hooligans had long hair. Connor was not a hooligan. 

 

Dylan couldn’t believe how many times he’d hear the word ‘hooligan’ in one very professional business meeting. 

 

“I’ll show you around then,” Connor said. Dylan had a suitcase with him and another in his car because he was moving in. This was a job that required him to literally live with and constantly monitor a hockey player who was two months older than him. 

 

Before three months ago, there was nothing anyone could have done to convince Dylan that this was a real job. 

 

And now here he was. 

 

Connor led him through the main level, poked his head out the door to the garage to show Dylan the space he’d be able to park his car. On the kitchen counter was a little pile of things for Dylan. A garage door opener, a house key, a mailbox key, the fob for his car to open the gate to Connor’s gated community. All in a neat pile. 

 

The basement had the workout room, where Dylan would make sure Connor worked out per the schedule the Oilers trainers would send to both Connor and Dylan. Maybe he’d work out with him too, in solidarity. And because college had made him a little soft, if he was being honest. 

 

Upstairs, Connor pointed out his own room, showed Dylan his closet, where Dylan would retrieve and return Connor’s dry cleaning. There were guest rooms for when Connor’s family came to stay, and then at the opposite end of the hall was Dylan’s suite. 

 

The house had clearly been designed with a mother-in-law suite. That’s what Dylan was moving into. There was a lock on his door that he had the key to, and when Connor opened the door, it opened into a living room with a couch, a TV, and a wet bar with a mini-fridge. In one corner, there was a desk for him to work at, with a huge monitor for his laptop waiting for him. 

 

Through the door at the back of the living room was his bedroom. Dylan had a queen sized bed, unlike Connor’s king, a nice-sized closet, and a bathroom that had a shower, tub, and a stacked washer and dryer for his clothes. He wasn’t completely self-sufficient in here, but he could probably stay in these rooms for days on end without having to leave. From what it sounded like, that’s what a lot of the guys who had had this position in the past had done. Or at least close.

 

“This is awesome,” Dylan said, rolling his suitcase over to the closet and leaving it there for when he felt like unpacking. 

 

“Yeah, it’s your space, so this will probably be the last time I’m in it. You’re welcome in the rest of the house, obviously, but it was decided that you’d need some privacy. I get that this is my life but your job and all that.” Connor was clearly repeating something someone else had told him. Maybe his dad. Dylan wasn’t super sure how to feel about Connor’s dad. 

 

“Okay, I’ll get the rest of my stuff and put my car in the garage. Then I can handle dinner?” According to the instructions, there should be meals in the fridge pre-made by a chef to specifically hit Connor’s macros, along with a meal for Dylan too. When Connor was on road trips, Dylan was free to eat whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. When he was home, it was easier to just make himself the same thing Connor had. Reheated food. 

 

Connor gave him the barest hint of a smile. “Sounds good,” he said and headed out of Dylan’s suite. Dylan watched him disappear into his own room. 

 

The first night was a little lonely, but that was okay. It was a new city, a new (weird) job, a new hockey season. He could take what this year threw at him. He could have a job with any hockey team he wanted after this. He could skip years of drudgery. This would pay off big time. He just had to keep his eyes on the prize. 

 

\---

 

Dylan and Connor got through pre-season together just fine. It was a little prescriptive. Some days, Dylan wasn't sure why he was even there. He’d go to remind Connor that he had a workout to do in twenty minutes, and Connor would already be in his workout gear, lacing his sneakers up. He’d monitor the kitchen for illicit foods, and find Connor eating leftover quinoa and kale. He had a note from Connor’s dad to make sure Connor FaceTimed his mom once a week, and Dylan didn’t have to bother him about that either. Connor had his calendar on his phone and obeyed. 

 

Dylan had no idea why everyone thought this was such an awful job. 

 

Some nights, he even stayed downstairs with Connor after dinner, and they watched hockey highlights or put a movie on or something, Dylan working on his weekly report on his laptop while Connor watched the game tape that he was assigned. Connor joked with him about their situation. Sometimes he called Dylan his handler or his keeper. Asked when his parents were coming home so the babysitter could be relieved. Joked that he was allowed to stay up till nine and was good at putting himself to bed if Dylan was already tired. 

 

By the time the season started, Dylan had a good cache of junk food in his suite. Chips, beer, frozen waffles. He had a plate, a bowl, a knife, a spoon, and a fork, and a toaster that made him feel a little illicit, coming off of student housing. He knew to grocery shop for his crap when Connor was gone, so he wouldn’t tempt Connor. 

 

When Connor was on the road, Dylan got reports from the trainers about how he was doing, how he was exercising, how he was eating. Dylan compiled it into his own weekly report. Sent it out on Sundays. Connor knew it was happening. Connor did not get CC’d. 

 

\---

 

“The season starts tomorrow,” a voice said, coming out of Dylan’s computer. He was on a conference call. He was always on a conference call. Connor’s Team was spread across all of Canada. They had met in person over the summer for strategy meetings for the 2018-19 year, but now during the season, it was all like this—over the phone. “Connor’s hair is still too long.” 

 

Dylan had been waiting for this. Connor’s dad had a rule for both his boys about their hair, and despite Connor being twenty-one, Bryan was still attached to it. He’d convinced the others that short hair looked clean-cut and trustworthy. 

 

“I know, I hear you,” Dylan said. “And we can go get it cut tomorrow if you want. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I think him having long hair could be a good narrative.” 

 

“How so?” a voice snapped. It was hard to tell them all apart over the phone, but from the strength of the snap, Dylan suspected it was Bryan McDavid. 

 

“Connor is growing up. He’s not a little kid anymore. He’s the captain of his team. He’s maturing. The long hair shows that. It’s still pretty short now, but the longer it gets, the more rugged it looks. Everyone assumes one thing about Connor. That he doesn’t have a personality outside of hockey, and I know we’re here to maintain that. But giving him the opportunity to grow it out will be a safe, easy way to show the hockey world that Connor is a person. He’s growing up, he’s trying things. There are already some positive comments online. And if it starts looking awful, we can go cut it then.” Dylan took a breath. It was the most he’d talked on any conference call yet. 

 

There was a pause as everyone processed Dylan’s pitch. 

 

“Well, I like that,” a different voice said. “Flow is part of hockey. On behalf of CCM, we could get behind a little more lettuce on the kid.” 

 

Alright. Dylan liked the CCM PR person. He was taking two sets of notes: Official notes, and personal notes. He wrote down in his personal note section that CCM was the first to back him. First to support Connor exploring a new look. 

 

“He’s not a greasy kid. The hair is looking fine so far. I agree that it would be a good thing for conversation to gravitate toward. Some flavor during broadcasts. We’re always looking for flavor when it comes to Connor.” It was the only woman on the call, so Dylan knew he just got Oilers PR approval. 

 

“BioSteel will back that. As long as he keeps the rest of his body in check, he can do whatever he wants with his hair. As long as it looks cool.” 

 

“It’ll look cool,” Dylan promised. A grown-out short haircut was hockey tradition. Dylan already knew what it would look like from watching his teammates on his high school and college teams do exactly the same thing. 

 

“Okay, Bryan, we’re trying it,” came the final nail in the coffin. This came straight from Richard, Dylan’s boss and the head of the McDavid account at Elite PR. They were who paid Dylan’s paycheck. “I like this idea, kid. We’ll see how it goes.” 

 

“And the beard?” Dylan asked. 

 

“Sure, kid. And the beard,” Richard agreed. 

 

They covered a few other things. Dylan recited his report that he’d already sent them, added a little color, like how happy Connor was to start the season. When they hung up, Dylan let out a breath. It was possible he’d spent his bargaining chips too soon. 

 

Connor was heading out the door to go hang with some of his teammates for bonding as Dylan told him the good news. 

 

“Are you serious?” He asked, his face bright, one hand going to finger-comb through his hair absently. 

 

“Yeah, I’m serious.” 

 

“How did you get my dad to agree to that? Seriously—I’ve been fighting for this my literal whole life.” 

 

“I got everyone else on board,” Dylan shrugged. 

 

“Wow. I’m impressed. I owe you something for that for sure. You already know how regimented my haircut schedule usually is.” That was the truth. Connor had haircuts scheduled six weeks apart. Dylan still had to cancel the one for tomorrow, but he’d keep the standing date. Connor had one woman who cut his hair and apparently that was something that Connor felt strongly about. It was basically the only thing Connor had spoken up about, so Dylan wanted to respect it. 

 

“Did you want to come with?” Connor asked, his hands in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie. He had a backward snapback on, his hair curling from under the edges. 

 

Dylan smiled. It was a sweet gesture, to try to include him. In the weeks he’d been living in Connor’s house, he’d found that he wasn’t as aloof as everyone made him sound. He invited Dylan to hang out pretty frequently actually. They chatted while they worked out side by side, spotting each other when they needed it. It didn’t feel artificial to be invited along. It felt like an extension of the time they were already spending with each other. 

 

“Nah, man. Would anyone let you hear the end of that if I came along?” Dylan said and saw something in Connor’s face close off a little. 

 

“Oh, yeah. Maybe,” he said like he hadn’t considered who Dylan was. What Dylan was doing there. Like he’d maybe forgotten why Dylan was there in the first place. 

 

“I’ll catch up with you when you get home,” Dylan said, trying to get that no-haircut smile back on his face. 

 

“Sure. I won’t be late,” Connor said, a little stiff again. He slipped out the door to the garage and Dylan wandered back up to his suite, cracked a beer from his secret stash. He put on a baseball game and tied to forget that he was alone in Alberta. 

\---

 

They took their conference call with CCM at the kitchen table. The two of them were freshly showered from their morning workout, recovery shakes in hand. It reminded Dylan of college, which he tried not to think about much. Connor is the one who still gets to play hockey, not Dylan. Maybe after this year is over, he’d join a beer league back home. 

 

“They just want to talk about some upcoming shoots,” Dylan said, shrugging. They had new gear coming out, and they had an on-ice shoot they were planning for on a Tuesday that the rest of the Oilers would have off. Connor still had to suit up that day. Dylan was really starting to see how many days off Connor didn’t get. 

 

“Yeah, CCM is always cool, I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Connor said. Dylan dialed in, and a few CCM people sounded very happy to hear from Connor himself. With the man in the room, they were much more upbeat about the gear than when they were talking just to Dylan. Like they were still selling themselves to Connor. 

 

It was a different vibe from the PR person Dylan usually dealt with. But this was a different department. 

 

They discussed what should and should not be shared on social media for behind-the-scenes Instagram stories and Dylan took notes. Connor gave his input on the gear he’d tried so far, even though it didn’t matter. He’d be wearing it regardless. He wouldn’t be speaking in the promotional materials they were shooting. 

 

When they got off the call, Connor sagged. “I’m so bad at that shit, I wish they would just let me play hockey and leave me alone. If I’d realized coming into all these deals how exhausting it would be, I would have ducked out of one or two.” 

 

“Yeah, you have a pretty tight schedule,” Dylan said. 

 

Connor dropped his head to his arms, where they were crossed on the table. He looked like a high schooler who intended to sleep through class. He had practice later that day. Dylan knew that because Dylan knew every second of his schedule. It was his job. 

 

“You want to take a nap before practice? I’ll make sure you get up in time to leave,” he said, even though he knew Connor was perfectly capable of getting himself out of bed on his own. He always did. It seemed like he never really needed Dylan’s help. He wasn’t nearly as useless as his team seemed to think he was.

 

“What are you planning on doing for the next couple of hours?” Connor asked.

 

“I have some stuff to get done,” he said, picking up his laptop and holding it up like  _ yanno, on this thing _ .  _ Work.  _

 

“If I took a nap on the couch would you hang out down here with me?” Connor had twisted his head to the side, still pillowed on his arms. He was looking at Dylan with tired eyes, the smallest pout on his lips, and Dylan just didn’t have the ability to say no to him. 

 

“My typing isn’t going to bug you?” 

 

“I like napping with a little bit of stuff happening in the background,” he explained. Dylan understood that. He liked it too. Not loud chaos, but just house sounds. Housemate sounds. Maybe a dog padding around until they found a comfortable spot to nap as well. 

 

“Yeah, I can do that,” Dylan said. He took his laptop into the living room, and Connor put on a baseball game with the volume low, and they settled into the couches. Connor wrapped a little living room throw blanket over him. 

 

“You want me to get you a real blanket?” Dylan asked. Connor’s toes were sticking out. The blanket was so small that it made Connor look big. Dylan was getting cold just looking at him. 

 

“Seriously?” Connor asked. 

 

“Yeah, dude, no problem.” He headed upstairs to the linen closet and grabbed a big fluffy fleece blanket. When he came back down, he draped it over Connor, covered his feet. Connor snuggled into it. 

 

In the giant blanket, Connor looked suddenly small, sweet. Just his face was peeking out, pillowed on an ugly throw pillow. 

 

“Thanks, Dylan,” Connor said, his eyes already closed. 

 

Dylan let him sleep for an hour. When he had about twenty minutes until Connor needed to leave for practice, he shut his laptop and put it on the coffee table. He wasn’t sure how best to wake Connor up. He looked more relaxed in sleep than Dylan had ever seen him awake. 

 

“Hey, Con,” Dylan said, kneeling next to Connor on the couch. He gently ran his fingers through Connor’s hair, pushing it back and off his forehead. 

 

Connor clamped his eyes shut, pushed into Dylan’s touch. “That’s nice,” he said. 

 

“You have about twenty before you have to leave for practice,” Dylan told him. 

 

“Can you keep doing that?” Connor asked, scootching up on the couch half an inch to press into Dylan’s hand. “Just for like, a little longer?” 

 

“Yeah,” Dylan said. His job was weird for many reasons. His job was basically ‘do whatever Connor wants to keep him happy in this cage.’ So he combed through Connor’s hair again, fingers gentle. 

 

Dylan kept scratching through Connor’s hair, the blond locks longer than Dylan had really realized. He kept one eye on the clock, felt the minutes tick away as Connor sighed into his touch. 

 

“You got about five minutes before you need to leave,” Dylan said, his voice hushed. It felt delicate in the living room, the baseball game still on in the background, Dylan’s knees hurting from the weird way he’d been sitting for fifteen minutes. 

 

“Fuck,” Connor groaned. He took a deep breath, and his eyes slowly opened, a smile spreading across his face when he saw Dylan. “Thank you.” 

 

“Any time,” Dylan said, and he meant it. It felt like they had connected a little. 

 

Connor extricated himself from the blanket and hurried out the door, letting Dylan know he’d be back in a few hours. 

 

Dylan folded the blanket but kept it on the couch. Who knew how soon Connor would need it again. 

  
  


—-

 

It was lonely when Connor went on road trips. Dylan got a lot of work done, got a lot of TV watched. He would barely leave his rooms, except to make food. 

 

When Connor came home, Dylan knew a little of what to expect. The Oilers had a string of tough games. Some heavy losses. Dylan had watched the post-game interviews. He knew Connor was bummed. 

 

Dylan was in the living room when he heard the garage door creak open, heard Connor drop his bag at the door. Dylan would pick it up later. Not because he was Connor’s maid, but because he knew it would ease something for Connor. Dylan had that innate  _ whatever _ inside of him that made him want to make people happy. And it never really seemed like Connor was. 

 

Tonight, especially, was rough. Connor’s hair fell, stringy, in his face. He collapsed on the couch next to Dylan, closer than was necessary with the number of cushions the couch boasted. 

 

Dylan wasn’t sure what to say. If he should say anything. 

 

“You mind if I call my mom?” Connor asked. Dylan shook his head. It was the living room. If Connor wanted to have a private conversation, he could go to his room, or kick Dylan out. He could have chosen not to sit right next to Dylan. He could have done any number of things. 

 

Instead, he dropped his head to Dylan’s shoulder. “Is this okay?” Connor asked. Connor had never been the skittish animal that Richard had described him as around Dylan. He’d always been comfortable, amiable. A little tactile. Just touches here and there, a hand on Dylan’s shoulder as he moved past him in the kitchen, fingertips on his arm to get his attention. 

 

“Yeah, man, it’s cool,” Dylan said, and watched Connor dial his mom.  

 

Dylan could hear both sides of the conversation, this close to it. He learned that Connor’s mom called him Sunshine and that she was worried. Connor didn’t talk much, just listened to his mom’s voice. Dylan could feel Connor relax against his shoulder like he needed physical contact with a human and to hear his mom’s voice at the same time. Dylan understood. He was a little desperate for human contact too. He’d talked to his own mom on the phone that morning. 

 

“Love you, Momma,” Connor said as he hung up his phone. He let out a long sigh. From the ten minutes they were on the phone, Dylan could easily tell how different Connor’s relationship with his mom was than his relationship with his dad. “Fuck hockey, what did I get myself into even?” 

 

“You guys will find your game,” Dylan said. It was not Dylan’s job to ever say negative things, to ever offer criticism. No one had told him that, or anything. Dylan just knew. If he was going to open his mouth to say something about the Oilers, or about Connor’s hockey, he had to be positive. “You had a great goal in that game against the Blues.” 

 

“And we still lost,” Connor said, moping. Dylan didn’t know what to do. He just wanted to make Connor happy. 

 

Dylan got an idea. “Hold tight for a sec, okay?” he said, easing out from under Connor’s head. Connor straightened, watched as Dylan hurried up the stairs. 

 

Dylan never locked his suite. There was no reason. Connor didn’t lock any part of the house from him, and all he had in there was his Xbox and some beer. 

 

He grabbed a bag of chips from his stash and headed back downstairs. 

 

“Close your eyes,” he told Connor, and Connor slapped a hand over his eyes. Dylan rounded the corner to the front of the couch and dropped the bag into his lap. 

 

Connor jumped in surprise a bit, but a smile burst on his face when he saw what Dylan had given him. 

 

“Flamin’ Hot?” he said, brighter than any smile Dylan had ever seen him give food before. Flamin’ Hot Cheetos were at the very top of the  _ do not allow Connor to eat these  _ list. 

 

“I mean, seems like you need it,” Dylan said. He took his spot next to Connor again, not as close as they had been. Connor scooted just a hair closer to him and opened the bag. 

 

“You could get fired for this,” Connor said casually, reaching his hand into the bag and pulling out a handful of Cheetos. He held the bag out to Dylan, offering to share even though Dylan could eat Cheetos whenever he pleased. That’s just who Connor was. He’d share the one bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos he had to his name. Dylan took a few, but resolved to let Connor have most of them. 

 

“Yeah, but only if you tell on me,” Dylan said. He was pretty sure that Connor wouldn’t be trying to get the guy who gave him illicit Cheetos fired. But he was taking a risk. 

 

Connor tipped his head back onto Dylan’s shoulder. “Yeah. And you know I wouldn’t do that.” 

 

“Yeah. I do,” Dylan agreed. 

 

\---

 

Dylan felt like he was crossing some kind of a line. “It’ll be fun, dude, relax,” Connor told him, his hands turning the wheel of his car as they headed to Darnell and Leon’s place. They were  _ hanging with the boys _ , and Connor had convinced Dylan that he needed to get out of the house and see some people other than the folks who delivered their groceries. 

 

“Don’t you think it’s weird?” Dylan asked, self-conscious. He’d met the Oilers before. Or, he’d been in the room with them. Dylan was present for every media-related thing other than post-game interviews. He had to get the Instagram content or make sure everyone knew what was in Connor’s contract when it came to fan signings. Everyone in the room knew who Dylan was and why he was there. 

 

“They want to meet you. All they do is hear me talking about you, so they want to get to know you too.” 

 

“You talk about me?” Dylan asked. When he imagined Connor talking about him outside of his house, he imagined Connor complaining about him. About how much Dylan did in his daily life to inhibit his happiness. The food, the outfit approval (Dylan hated that), tracking his exercise regimen, weight, and measurements. Dylan wasn’t exactly doing it for his own good health. His commands were coming from the top. But he was still the person executing the commands. 

 

“Yeah, dude. We live together. You’re cool, of course I talk about you.” 

 

“Oh,” Dylan said. He wasn’t allowed to talk about Connor. His friends from college he still talked to understood. Dylan had signed an NDA in order to live in Connor’s house. He couldn’t say anything about his job, from the kind of refrigerator in his room to the brand of shampoo that Connor used. It made having any kind of conversation tricky. 

 

They pulled into the parking lot for Darnell and Leon’s building and headed upstairs. Dylan was nervous. He felt like he was on Connor’s side, but of course he couldn’t be purely or truly on Connor’s side as long as he had his job. His teammates, however, had no conflicting loyalties. Or, at least Dylan hoped Connor had some people who were on his side one hundred percent. 

 

“We finally get to hang out with your boy, Davo,” Darnell said, welcoming them in. Darnell hugged Connor, then Dylan. Dylan got a handshake from Leon who was quiet, appraising Dylan. It made him trust Leon. He knew how close Connor and Leon were. Knew that Leon was his road buddy, the person he spent the most time with away from home. 

 

Dylan wondered, not for the first time, whether Connor felt like he  _ couldn’t  _ invite people over because Dylan was there. He’d make a note to let Connor know that he was perfectly happy to fuck off to his suite if Connor wanted to have friends over. 

 

Dylan watched how intentionally careful Darnell and Leon were about the food they offered Connor and Dylan. They were both well-versed in the protocol. 

 

It was awkward for the first half hour, but Darnell and Leon got a game of Fifa going, and Dylan and Connor played on a team. Connor was...bad at video games. Dylan hadn’t ever see him playing them on his own, but he didn’t really mind that Connor was dragging their team down. 

 

Connor just kept throwing his whole body into Dylan’s side, like he needed his whole body to get his player into the right spot to accept Dylan’s pass. 

 

They lost horribly. But it was fun to trash talk with Connor’s friends. It was fun to see Connor in this context, where there was no objective. No schedule. Nothing to  _ report back  _ on. 

 

Dylan and Connor each had one beer, which was the arbitrary limit that  Connor’s Team made up for him. For all Dylan knew, Connor ignored this on the road and when he was with friends and Dylan-less. But from what Dylan knew about Connor, he suspected that he might not. Connor may have a lot of controls in place for his life, but he also took his hockey more seriously than anyone else Dylan had ever met. Regardless, Dylan was glad Connor didn’t put him in a weird position by going for a second. Didn’t test Dylan in front of his friends. 

 

When they got home, Connor looked loose for the first time in a while, the tightness around his mouth relaxed. He had a home game the next day, and Dylan couldn’t help but worry about him. Home games always incited a little more anxiety in Connor’s eyes than away games. Connor always wanted to be perfect in front of Oilers fans, their home crowd. 

 

Not for the first time, Dylan wished he didn’t feel  _ so fucking bad  _ for Connor every time he thought about his life. 

\---

 

“The blue suit,” Connor said at the fitting. Connor had a deal with a local tailor. All of his suits were Henry Singer. It was November, and he was finally getting the suit refresh for this season. 

 

“You have a million blue suits,” Dylan argued. He had a list on his phone of some style suggestions from Connor’s Team. From Connor’s dad, really. When it comes to what Connor looks like, Dylan was abundantly aware of how obsessed Bryan McDavid was. 

 

Dylan thought Connor looked nice in blue. It brought out his eyes, and this suit had a sheen to it that made it look polished. Dylan was just arguing to argue. 

 

“Yeah, but I don’t like the other ones,” Connor said, softly and only to Dylan. He wasn’t about to hurt the tailor’s feelings, but Dylan could tell he was anxious. He was chewing his nails. There was a truly terrible brown one, but Dylan thought he could get a soft gray plaid into his closet. 

 

Connor was standing on a small platform in front of a bay of mirrors, a tailor pinning the pants of the blue suit to the correct length. Dylan circled behind him, letting himself have this moment of unabashedly checking Connor out. His pants are always custom made. Hockey ass and all that. Dylan  _ loved _ hockey. 

 

The suit just flattered him so well, showed off his shape. His broad shoulders, his little waist. His hair was getting longer by the day. Connor was developing this unconscious habit of carding his fingers through his hair to get it out of his face, and it hit Dylan anew every time he did it. 

 

“Blue is my signature. Plus, who can argue against blue in Edmonton?” 

 

“Yeah, yeah. You won. You can get three blue suits. But get the gray plaid too, alright? And you dad already picked out ties, so, unfortunately, there is no wiggle room there,” Dylan said. 

 

“Alright, alright,” Connor compromised. He knew where to pick his fights. Bryan was clear that he hated Connor’s hair, but the Oilers PR woman was behind it enough that Bryan got overruled. It hadn’t been a topic of conversation in a little while. Dylan felt like when Connor went home for Christmas the flow would get the ax. 

 

Dylan loved seeing Connor in some new suits, but on the way out of the store, Dylan let him appreciate the way Connor dressed himself. Hoodie, puffer vest, a snapback doing very little to contain his hair. The easy smile of a man who had crossed something very boring to him off the to-do list. Sometimes, Connor was just a sight. 

 

—

 

Dylan wasn’t exactly sure where Connor stood on having his own kids, but he knew that kids were Connor’s favorite kind of fan. He was actually excited on the drive over to the outdoor rink a kids’ team was practicing at, ready to surprise them with copies of NHL ’19 and a practice with him. 

 

“Kids just don’t give you lip, you know,” Connor said, chewing on his thumbnail. “They’re just happy to see you. I wish everyone just had that joy of hockey like kids do. They don’t care if you lose. They’re just having fun, you know?” 

 

“Yeah,” Dylan said, reaching over to pull Connor’s thumbnail from between his teeth. It was A Directive for Dylan to figure out how to get Connor to quit chewing his nails. Dylan’s job was an endless odyssey of  _ wasn’t expecting to have to do this at work today _ . He had been batting Connor’s hands away from his mouth a lot lately. 

 

Other than Connor’s nail chewing, it was the perfect afternoon. Connor was smiling big as he put his skates on inside, as he carefully walked the path from the warming house out to the rink where the kids already were. There was a little film crew there from EA, because this would turn into a commercial. Dylan just stayed out of the way for the most part, tried to soak in Connor’s good vibes. 

 

He was so fucking cute on the ice with those kids, the joy on his face as he kept passing the puck, helping the kids set up plays as they had an impromptu scrimmage. The rosy cheeks he got from the cold. He refused to shoot on the goalie, which Dylan thought was unbearably sweet. That probably wouldn’t make the commercial, though. 

 

After their practice, EA set the kids up to play video games against Connor. For a week, Connor had made Dylan tutor him so he wouldn’t embarrass himself in front of these children. Dylan knew he had moves. But he still let the kids win almost every round. Dylan had to remind himself to keep his face professional. 

 

Dylan wanted to remember the smile on Connor’s face on the way home, as they traded stories of playing hockey when they were that age. Connor was already a phenom, already playing with boys a year up from him. It was weird to hear Connor talk about how serious hockey was when he was ten. How serious hockey had always been for him. Hockey had always felt serious for Dylan when he was a kid, but doing a side-by-side compare, he had nothing on Connor McDavid. 

 

But he suspected few people did. 

 

—

 

“Hey so, I don’t want to be awkward about this,” Dylan started. Connor was on the couch next to him, eyes glued to the intermission report for the Devils game. Dylan had waited until they were done talking about Taylor Hall for the best chance of Connor giving him his attention. 

 

“Yeah?” Connor asked, turning his head to Dylan. 

 

“Just need to uh, make sure that when you’re on the road, if you bring anyone back to your hotel, you’re getting them to sign that NDA,” he rushed through. Dylan was supposed to collect these NDA’s from Connor and deliver them to Richard which was  _ the fucking weirdest and most awful  _ part of his job. 

 

Connor laughed. “Oh, yeah. That.” He had a little smile on his face, like Dylan was missing something obvious. 

 

“What?” 

 

“I don’t bring people back to my hotel,” Connor said, shaking his head. 

 

“Why not?” 

 

“Because while it would be not great for it to leak that I bring a bunch of girls back to my hotel room or whatever, it would be actually terrible for it to leak if I brought who I wanted back to my hotel room.” 

 

Dylan wasn’t sure he was actually hearing what he was hearing. “Huh?” 

 

“Boys,” Connor clarified, raising his eyebrows at Dylan. “I would bring back boys. And that would get me in trouble, NDA or not, you know?” 

 

“Yeah,” Dylan said, in a bit of a haze. Connor…was gay. His brain was working in overdrive, trying to sort that out. He couldn’t fully formulate his question, but he still went for it. “How do you…” 

 

“How do I have sex? In the summer. There’s a guy back home I work out with. Sometimes we…” he shrugged like,  _ fill in the blanks yourself. _

 

“Oh,” Dylan said. “You…only in the summer?” 

 

Connor shrugged. “Life is full of sacrifices. If I thought I could do that here safely, with someone I trusted, the story would be different.” He didn’t sound too broken up about it. But Dylan was broken up about it. “Anyway, don’t expect a little pile of NDAs on your desk anytime soon is what I’m saying.” 

 

“Yeah,” Dylan agreed. “Sure. Thanks for telling me. Um. Me too. Boys too.” 

 

Connor just nodded. “I know,” he said, simple as anything. 

 

“What?” Dylan asked. How could Connor know?

 

“C’mon,” Connor said, like it was obvious. “I know.” 

 

The game resumed for the second period, and Connor turned his attention back to the TV. Alright. Somehow it was very clear to Connor that Dylan was gay. And he wasn’t going to spend too much of his brain power on how, because it would just drive him crazy. 

  
  


\---

 

The little kid inside of Dylan still got excited when he went in for front office meetings. He wasn’t technically working  _ for _ the NHL, but he was working with the NHL. He was a hockey professional, even if he wasn’t a professional hockey player. It was as close to living his dream as he could have possibly anticipated, especially so soon out of college. After this year, he wanted to work in the Leafs front office like this. That was his goal. Times like these made that goal solidify in his chest. 

 

It made him double down commitment to doing the best job he possibly could while he was Connor McDavid’s glorified babysitter. 

 

His meeting that day was with Cindy, the head of Oilers PR, along with the woman who did the Oiler’s social media, Natalie. Dylan had worked with them before, getting social media tips for running Connor’s social stuff. 

 

Most of the time when he posted, the caption had already been written by whatever marketing team was sending him the content. Biosteel or CCM or Adidas or whatever. Adidas wasn’t on Connor’s Team because they couldn’t give a single shit about how Connor presented himself. His track record spoke for itself. They had bigger fish to fry. Dylan respected that. 

 

Dylan mostly just copy-pasted a pre-written caption into a post with the approved photo. Sometimes he filmed Connor saying something incredibly stiff for Instagram stories. Connor was awful in front of the camera, suddenly a completely different person. Dylan tried not to make him do that very often. 

 

“We just wanted to check in about Connor,” Cindy said. “We know Connor’s been feeling a lot of pressure this year, and we wanted to take a quick pulse check to see how he’s feeling. Emotionally.” 

 

“Emotionally,” Dylan repeated back. 

 

“He has a lot on his shoulders, you know,” Natalie said, as though Dylan didn’t literally live in Connor’s house. He knew all about the pressure Connor was under. Dylan was a cog in the pressure cooker itself. 

 

“For sure,” Dylan said, just to have some words come out of his mouth.

 

“And we feel like maybe a one-on-one situation like this, instead of a group call, would be a better place to discuss his happiness,” Cindy added. The subtext was clear: Anything you couldn’t say in front of Connor’s dad is safe to say in front of us. 

 

“He’s doing fine,” Dylan said. He was in a chair with a swivel and he couldn’t help but swivel it, to try to get his nervous energy out any way he could. He didn’t want to tell Oilers PR staff about Connor’s fucking  _ feelings. _ “He may be stressed, but I think that’s just to be expected in professional sports.” 

 

“I see,” Cindy said, realizing that she wasn’t going to get anything juicy from Dylan. 

 

Natalie steered the conversation into some tips for Connor’s Instagram stories. Dylan could use all the help he could get. He honestly had no idea what to even use them for as Connor wouldn’t allow him to point his phone camera at his face or any other part of him. 

 

Dylan hadn’t dished on Connor’s emotional well-being, but he still felt like he had. Like even having this meeting made him guilty of something. It felt shitty. 

 

On his way home, Dylan stopped for chicken wings. The list of food that was Absolutely Prohibited in Connor’s House was a really good guide to comfort food for Connor. 

 

Dylan was having a harder and harder time reporting on Connor. Bending some truths made him feel a little better. And bringing him his favorite foods seemed like a good penance. 

 

When he showed Connor the chicken wings, Connor’s brow furrowed. “In some respects, you are the worst person who has ever had this job.” 

 

“What, because I know that sometimes people need food for emotional reasons, and not just as hockey fuel?”

 

“Are you having emotional reasons you need chicken wings? It’s okay dude. You eat a lot of boring food with me. I’m not going to hold your chicken wings against you if you want to eat them in front of me.” 

 

“It’s not—” Dylan started. But, well. Yeah. These chicken wings were about him. He took a breath. “Are you really going to turn down hot wings?” 

 

Connor smiled at him, grabbed one wing from the container and stripped the bones easily with a practiced move. Clearly, this wasn’t the first time he’d had a chicken wing. “I’m going to heat up one of those bland things I usually eat. Thanks for the chicken wing. And if you like, need to talk about something, you can talk to me.” 

 

Connor’s eye contact on the last bit of his statement punched Dylan in the gut. He wished he could talk to Connor about this. But he tried to keep the Business Of Connor out of their conversations as much as possible. 

 

Connor grabbed a napkin from the plastic bag the wings came in and wiped his fingers off before grabbing a pre-made meal for himself from the fridge, upturning it onto a plate and sticking it in the microwave. He gave it a couple minutes, chewing his thumbnail as he waited, and when he was done he nudged Dylan toward the living room. Dylan followed him with his wings. 

 

They watched hockey, because Connor watched every game he could, and they talked about home, since they were watching the Flyers play the Leafs. Dylan had come into this job thinking that Connor would be practically an alien species. He’d been surprised at how much they had in common. How just being a life-long Leafs fan meant they never ran out of things to talk about. How growing up in the same general area gave them contrasts to their childhood experiences. So much was the same that picking apart the differences was fun. 

 

Dylan thought back to the conversation he’d had with Richard before Dylan moved into Connor’s house. He’d had the job two years before, and had used it as a springboard into managing the McDavid account himself. He’d described Connor as being cold, aloof, like living with a cat who doesn’t like you. 

 

But maybe Richard had just been living with a person who didn’t like him. Because Connor had never been that way with Dylan. Connor had always been soft, stressed-out smiles, putting on a happy face for Dylan because he didn’t like to spread his negative feelings. He’d been curious and kind questions about Dylan’s family. He’d carefully noticed how Dylan liked his coffee (splash of half and half) even though Connor had to drink his black. 

 

He was not just the epitome of polite Canadian kid. At some point, he’d become Dylan’s friend. 

 

Connor polished off his approved meal while Dylan was still working on wings. He’d bought enough for two of them, so he didn’t think he should actually finish them. Connor snuck another wing out of the little bucket Dylan was working out of, gave him this genuine little smile Dylan didn’t see very often. 

 

“Will you try something for me?” Dylan asked as Connor wiped his hands clean again. 

 

“Yeah, what’s up?” Connor asked. 

 

“I got this stuff,” Dylan said. He headed into the kitchen to grab it off the kitchen counter. “It’s supposed to help you stop chewing your fucking nails.” 

 

“Oh, shut up, are you serious?” Connor asked in his flat  _ every-day-is-hell _ voice. 

 

“Every time your dad sees you chew a nail in a post-game, I hear about it. So yeah, I’m serious.” 

 

Connor’s face scrunched into a confused look. “My dad seriously yells at you when I chew my nails?” 

 

“He sure does, buddy. So do me a solid, and let me fucking paint your nails with this…I dunno. Shitty tasting stuff.” Dylan held up the little bottle. He’d seen his mom’s nail polishes as a kid. It looked like that, but clear. 

 

“Nail polish?” Connor was skeptical. 

 

“It doesn’t look like you’re wearing nail polish, the reviews said. It just tastes gross.” 

 

“Alright, do your worst I guess,” Connor said. He held his hands out. 

 

Dylan very carefully tried to paint each nail, but  _ fuck _ it was hard. He was glad it was clear because he was kind of getting it everywhere. Connor was laughing at him. 

 

“Is this the full salon experience?” Connor asked. 

 

“Fuck you, I’m trying, okay?” Dylan said. The bottle said two coats, so after getting through all of Connor’s fingernails, he went back for a second round. 

 

“This is very labor intensive,” Connor observed. 

 

“Yeah, and I have to do this every handful of days, so we better both get used to it.” Dylan rolled his eyes. 

 

“I’ll stop,” Connor said. His voice was soft, like he was telling Dylan a secret, all teasing done. “I didn’t realize you were getting yelled at for this. I’ll stop for you.” 

 

“They’re going to yell at me for something,” Dylan said, filing away the tone of Connor’s voice when he said ‘ _ I’ll stop for you.’  _ “It’s no big deal.” 

 

“Well, thanks for. I don't know. Thanks, Dylan. I know this isn’t the most fun job or anything.” 

 

“Honestly it usually is the most fun job,” Dylan said. “Watching hockey and hanging out with you? It’s not exactly painful for me.” 

 

“You’d let me know if you were miserable, right?” Connor looked concerned. Connor looked like he wanted to do something about it. But Dylan knew he couldn’t. Connor didn’t have any control. 

 

“I’m fine, Con, I promise.” It was kind of a lie. But he turned his head down to finish up Connor’s final pinky nail, then bent his head down to blow them dry. 

 

Connor held his hands out for a few minutes, being hyper-careful of the new polish. 

 

And not even five minutes after Dylan finished, Connor stuck a nail in his mouth and shouted. “Fuck, this shit is disgusting oh my god.” He grabbed for his Gatorade and took a big gulp of it, swishing it in his mouth to get the bitter taste out of there. 

 

All Dylan could do is crack up. 

 

\---

 

Dylan was puttering around Connor’s empty house late one December night. Connor was on a roadie. It was getting cold, and Dylan was restless. He was counting down the days until he got to go back to Toronto for Christmas, got to go sleep at his parents’ house and eat his mom’s food and see his friends from college. He was trying hard to pretend he wasn’t homesick, wasn’t lonely, but it was hard. He had a heavy heart as he double checked that all the doors and windows were locked, that the lights were off. 

 

He was grabbing a water out of the fridge when he felt the phone in the pocket of his flannel pajamas buzz. It was past ten in Edmonton. Everyone in his real life was asleep in Ontario already. He fished his phone out of his pocket and saw Connor’s number pop up. 

 

“What’s up?” Dylan asked. He’d watched the Oilers game that night. How it had started out a little shaky, but he’d watched the wheels fall completely off. He’d watched Connor’s post game interview where he’d been asked some pointed questions about what had gone wrong and had given answers a little more abrasive than people had come to expect from eternally-even-keel Connor McDavid. 

 

Tomorrow, Dylan would receive a call from Richard about it. That Dylan needed to remind Connor to reel it in a little. And Dylan would promise to talk to him about it, but he wouldn’t. Connor knew better than anyone how to conduct himself in a media interview, and coaching him when he was stressed and upset like this would only drive a wedge between them. Would only undermine any trust Connor had in Dylan. Dylan would have to lie about it. Put another lie onto the pile. 

 

“You there?” Dylan asked, as a few quiet seconds ticked by. He could hear Connor’s breath on the other end of the line. He knew Connor was there. 

 

“Yeah. I don’t know why I’m calling. I just. I don’t know.” Dylan knew this voice. The strangled, weak, beaten-down voice Connor used when his tank was out of gas. Dylan let Connor find his words, another pause stretching out in front of them. “I guess I just wanted to talk to you.” 

 

Not ‘wanted to talk.’ Not ‘wanted to get my mind off of things.’ Connor wanted to talk to Dylan. Specifically. 

 

“I’ve got nothing but time,” Dylan said, and headed upstairs to his suite. His TV was still on from the Oilers game earlier, and he shut it off, pulled his shirt over his head, climbed into bed. 

 

“It’s just been a long road trip,” Connor said. He was acting a little cagey like he was holding something back. All Dylan wanted was to be face-to-face with him. It was always easier for Dylan to talk when he was in the same room with someone. 

 

No chance of that tonight. “Yeah, it has been long,” Dylan agreed. “I’ve missed you around here.” 

 

“Oh yeah?” Connor asked. Dylan could hear an uptick in his voice, ever so slight. Like maybe he’d called because he missed Dylan, but couldn’t say it out loud. Dylan decided to push, just a tiny bit. 

 

“Yeah. I miss you when you’re gone, golden boy.” 

 

There was another pause. An intake of breath. “I miss you, too.” 

 

Dylan smiled to himself. This job had been one colossal surprise after another. Sometimes the surprises were horrifying, like Connor’s Team wanting final approval on his underwear. Sometimes they were sweet though, like this. That he had a bond with Connor. That they had clicked so easily. 

 

“I’ll see you tomorrow though, right?” Dylan asked. He knew that Connor’s flight was scheduled to land at eleven forty-three in the morning, and he knew roughly how long it would take for Connor to drive home from the airport. He knew he’d have healthy snacks ready for him when he got home because Connor was always hungry after a flight. He knew every moment of every one of Connor’s days by heart. 

 

“Yeah. Maybe we could hang out?” They hung out every day. It was a foregone conclusion. But the fact that they both knew it would happen wasn’t so much the comfort as the saying it out loud was. 

 

“I’ll put it on the calendar,” Dylan joked, his words echoing into his room. When he’d moved in, he had decided to treat it like a hotel room. Like something that was not his. But as he looked around, he realized that it had started to feel like home. He had photos of his family on his dresser, his dirty clothes on the floor. He had an organizational system for his closet, and his favorite brand of toilet paper in the bathroom. He hadn’t meant for it to feel this way, but he felt at home here. Especially with Connor’s voice in his ear. 

 

“You go to any good restaurants in California?” Dylan asked, knowing that Connor liked finding places he could eat well on the road. Knowing that it was a way for him to escape his hotel room and be with people he felt safe with—his teammates—on the road. 

 

Dylan snuggled deeper into his covers as he listened to Connor talk about the sushi place in LA and the Italian spot up in San Jose. Divisional games were always the worst ones to lose, but getting Connor talking about something he enjoyed on his trips made Dylan feel like, while he might not be doing very well at his real job right now, he was doing a good job at the job that mattered. Being Connor’s friend. Taking care of him. 

 

It was easy to just keep talking once Dylan had gotten Connor started, the words flowing easily from topic to topic, Connor taking digs at how Dylan always left his shit all over the house. Dylan teasing Connor for how much Dylan had to help him when his computer froze the other day. When they finally hung up, Dylan felt fuller than he had before they had talked. He was still homesick, but something about Connor’s voice helped ease that in his chest. 

 

\---

 

Dylan has been burning the candle at both ends, trying to prepare for the trip home for Christmas for both him and Connor, prepping for Christmas itself at home with his family, and already feeling the pressure of All Star coming up. 

 

He’d worked the home game that night which he didn’t do often. Generally, there wasn’t a whole lot for him to do. He was mostly just there to be there. To get out of the house. To report back on how Connor was acting ‘in the room.’ Which was probably just information that Connor’s dad wanted. Connor was always good to his teammates, and Dylan would put that in his report regardless of the actual words or events he witnessed. Dylan felt like what happened in the room was for the people in the room.

 

But Dylan had watched them lose to the Blues in a pretty crushing defeat. Watched Connor give a disappointed, monotone post-game. They’d driven together in Dylan’s car, and Dylan drove them home in silence. He could tell how upset Connor was, but he didn’t know what to do about it. He was constantly questioning where his boundaries with Connor were.

 

Dylan was wearing a suit and polished shoes, and it was a constant, physical reminder that he and Connor weren’t just two buddies who decided to be roommates. Their relationship had layers to it. Dylan was confused most of the time. 

 

When they got home, Connor took a deep breath. Dylan thought Connor looked like he was about to cry. “Will you,” Connor started, his eyes flicking up to Dylan’s. They were still in the mudroom off the garage, their feet having stopped as soon as they were in the safety of Connor’s house. “Will you do that thing with my hair you did a while ago?” 

 

Connor looked broken and exhausted. He looked rough. Dylan would have done pretty much anything to bring some life back to him. “Scalp massage? Yeah, of course.” 

 

“Thank you, Dylan,” he said. It was polite, it was specific, it was a little run-down. It was Connor. “We need to change first, obviously. Will you come to my room?” 

 

There was a little blush on Connor’s cheeks, a peek of color on a face that had been pretty pale since they’d left the rink. 

 

Dylan nodded and they headed upstairs. Dylan disappeared into his suite and hung his suit back up, tossed his shirt into his laundry basket. He pulled pajamas on, a soft old U of T t-shirt and long plaid flannel pants. Then he padded into Connor’s room. 

 

Connor was already in bed, a game from earlier that night up on the TV. Connor could be non-stop, and while Dylan admired his work ethic, he did worry about burnout. Connor clearly had a side of his bed, and Dylan walked around to the far side. He climbed onto the bed, and Connor shook his head. 

 

“C’mon man, under the covers, I know my room is freezing.” Connor’s house was purposefully cold. Dylan knew all about it. He had ordered slippers on Amazon the week he’d arrived. He got under the covers. 

 

Connor’s bed was huge, a big king that made Dylan feel like he slept in a kid’s bed, even though it was plenty of room for one. Dylan scooted to rest his back against the headboard, and Connor gave him a shy look, bit his lip before shifting to lay down and put his head in Dylan’s lap. 

 

“This okay?” he asked. He was still facing the TV enough to watch the game, but Dylan doubted he actually would be. Sometimes he needed to shut his brain off.

 

“Yeah, man. This is cool,” Dylan said. Connor’s hair had gotten even longer since the last time he did this. He started light, just sweeping Connor’s hair off his forehead, combing it back with his fingers. It was thick, and could be soft if Connor knew how to take care of it, Dylan thought. Not that he had any tips, but he knew Connor mainly showered at the rink with shitty rink shampoo, and that probably wasn’t helping anything. 

 

Connor sighed, and Dylan could feel some tension seep out of him, his shoulders relaxing. Dylan used both hands to scratch through Connor’s hair, first from the crown of his head to his neck, then back up, ruffling his hair along the way. He scratched along his ear, and Connor tipped his head so Dylan could reach more of his hair on the side of his head that he’d been laying on, and Dylan tried to figure out how he could access all of Connor’s hair at once. 

 

The only thing he could think of would be to have Connor lay on top of him, on his chest. And he didn’t think he could suggest that and still have a job. 

 

It was a little weird to be in Connor’s bed. He couldn’t imagine any of the guys that had this job before him had ended up here with Connor, their fingers combing through Connor’s hair. His hair had been dividing people online. Dylan kept up with the shit people said online about him—good and bad—and put that in his weekly report too. A lot of people hated it, but even more thought it was sexy. And that’s where Dylan came down on it. 

 

“You’re really good at that,” Connor said, voice slow like molasses. Sleepy. 

 

“It’s on offer anytime,” Dylan said. Connor snuggled into him a little, and Dylan kept his hands moving, letting his fingertips dip down to scratch Connor’s back through his t-shirt. He could feel Connor slowly going boneless. 

 

“Mmm, I’m falling ‘sleep,” Connor slurred, his deep voice husky. Dylan was happy to hear Connor was relaxed enough to get some sleep, but disappointed that he was obviously going to get kicked out here soon. Connor’s bed was so fucking soft, and Connor was warm against him, even through the comforter that separated Connor’s head from Dylan’s lap. 

 

“Alright, I’ll get outta here,” Dylan said. He shifted a little, letting Connor know he needed to readjust so Dylan could leave. 

 

“No,” Connor said. “Just stay. It’s late,” as though Dylan had a longer way to go in order to get to his own bed than just walking down the hall. Connor rolled over and flipped the TV off, giving Dylan a little more room on the bed. In a queen, they would have been close. But in Connor’s king bed, there was plenty of room. And Connor’s bed was already warm. 

 

Dylan knew exactly when Connor would be waking up in the morning. He had a morning workout, which meant  _ they _ had a morning workout, so he let Connor take care of setting the alarm. 

 

Dylan didn’t think he was as relaxed as Connor was, but there was still something calming about giving a scalp massage, and Dylan hunkered down into Connor’s soft bedding and didn’t have a lot of trouble getting to sleep. 

 

\---

 

Hours later, Dylan woke only enough to notice Connor tossing and turning in bed, unable to settle for long. His consciousness didn’t drift all the way to the surface though. He wasn’t able to hold onto a complete thought about it. 

 

\---

 

When he woke for real, it was to a shout, a gasp, a sob. It was pitch black in Connor’s room, a cloudy night meaning they didn’t even have the benefit of moonlight. Dylan didn’t know Connor’s room well enough in daylight to feel confident now, but he reached out for Connor. His hand found Connor’s shaking chest, Connor’s hand coming up to cover his. To hold it there. 

 

“What’s wrong?” Dylan asked, his brain still scrambled from his own dreams. 

 

Connor’s chest was heaving as he struggled to get his breathing back in check. Dylan could feel his heart pounding in his rib cage. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness and to being awake, and he saw Connor brush his hair off his forehead, out of his eyes. 

 

“Just a nightmare,” Connor said. The words were casual, but Dylan could tell Connor was trying to downplay it. 

 

“You going to be able to get back to sleep?” Connor is trembling under Dylan’s touch. He’s gripping Dylan’s hand still, hard. 

 

“Maybe,” Connor said, honesty coming out in the dark. He always had such a stiff upper lip. Dylan was surprised that he’d even asked for the scalp massage in the first place. 

 

“C’mere, I’ll rub your back,” Dylan said. If he was any more awake, maybe he would have thought more about that offer. Connor scooted over to him, and then Dylan had an armful of big, sad hockey player tucked against him. Connor settled his head on Dylan’s shoulder, and he just held him tight for a moment. 

 

“You want to talk about it?” Dylan asked. Going right back to bed after a nightmare usually meant that he would fall back into it. He usually tried to wake himself up for a little while after one of his own nightmares. 

 

“It’s the same one,” Connor said. “I get the same one. Everything is fine. I’m here, at home. And everything is fine, but then I notice that the house is flooding. It’s not really clear where the water is coming from, but I can’t make it stop, and I can’t get out. None of the doors or windows will open.” 

 

“Shit.” 

 

“It sucks.” 

 

“You get it a lot?” 

 

“Not a lot,” Connor said. “Couple times a week.” 

 

“Oh, Con. That’s a lot,” Dylan said. He was giving Connor some kind of back rub/back scratch hybrid, and he felt Connor sigh. He went quiet, and Dylan didn’t fill the quiet air. 

 

Late at night like this, it was easy to feel like he and Connor were the last two people on earth. He thought about how much easier Connor’s life would be if that was true, and it filled him with such a deep heaviness. 

 

He tried to stay awake until he felt Connor fall back asleep, and he thought he might have been successful. But then again, you never quite feel that moment until it’s passed. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

“What’d you get your mom for Christmas?” Dylan asked. They were in first class. Dylan had booked the plane tickets home so they could be on the same flight to and from Toronto for Christmas. They had the same work schedule, so it made sense to sync their flights. Dylan had given Connor the window seat, so he could have a little more privacy from the rest of the plane. Dylan knew there wouldn’t be a lot of personal conversation. This seemed like a safe topic for people to overhear, though.

 

Connor smiled. Connor was such a momma’s boy. “Beach vacation. Spa package. One of those wine and paint night things for her and her friends. An InstantPot, whatever that is.”

 

Dylan laughed. He and his brothers had also gone in on an InstantPot for their mom together. To say Dylan and Connor had a budget discrepancy between what they spent on their moms was...an understatement.

 

They played Rummy to pass the time during the flight, since Connor always had a pack of cards in his carry on, and didn’t talk about much. Connor was easy to be quiet around, and Dylan was conscious that there were people listening. Connor kept his knee pressed to Dylan’s throughout the flight, and when Connor’s mom came to pick him up at the airport and he left Dylan waiting for his own ride, he hugged him, just a little too long.

 

Dylan got picked up by his dad who worked close to the airport, and asked him a thousand and one questions about his job. Dylan couldn’t really say anything, other than that he was learning a lot, had a lot of good opportunities. He was enjoying Edmonton but missed home. He felt like he was giving a post-game interview himself, learning how to use a lot of words to say nothing from watching so many of Connor’s.

 

He thought about how Connor was somewhere in the GTA right now, in the passenger seat of his mom’s white SUV. Driving away from Dylan.

 

Connor had been talking about seeing his family for weeks. Even though his relationship with his dad was a struggle, Dylan could tell how much he loved his family. He knew that it was good for Connor to be with them. And Dylan couldn’t deny how good it was for himself to be with his family.

 

Connor traveled all the time. Dylan was used to him being across the country. But somehow here, he felt further away.

 

\---

 

Dylan had one best friend, and that best friend was the boy next door, Mikey McLeod. Mikey was a year behind him at U of T, so he was on winter break. They were in the McLeod basement down the street from the Strome’s house on Christmas Eve afternoon, before Dylan was due back at his house for dinner and Mikey’s family left for his grandparents’ house.

 

“Has anyone ever senior slid more than I will next semester?” Mikey asked. They were passing one very strong jack and coke back and forth, because it was kind of tradition, a throwback to being teenagers and not wanting to dirty more than one cup.

 

“Well, me,” Dylan said. He wasn’t even sure how he graduated after his last semester.

 

“Yeah, whatever, you had to have done something good to get that job you have now. By the way? I hate your job. You’re too fucking far away.”

 

“You’re just disappointed I moved out of that gross house,” Dylan said. He and Mikey and some of their friends from school had lived in a house together for the two glorious years after Mikey had been a freshman, and before Dylan had graduated. Dylan knew the house was gross partly because he was one of the people living in it and contributing to its grossness, but that didn’t seem to matter at this moment.

 

“Do you like it? Living in McDavid’s house? I literally cannot believe that’s your job.”

 

“You’re not supposed to know any of that, by the way,” Dylan said. He’d accidentally told Mikey what the deal with his job was before he’d signed his NDA.

 

“But I do, so dish. What’s he like?”

 

“Ugh, c’mon, man. I have such a fucking hard time not telling you shit, please don’t take advantage of that.”

 

“Do you like your job? Can you say that much?” Mikey took a sip of their drink and handed it back to Dylan. They were slumped into the basement couch, which had seen some better days.

 

“Yeah,” Dylan said. “I like it. Some parts are hard, but, yeah. Some parts are good.”

 

“What is that dopey smile for?” Mikey asked, and Dylan couldn’t help but think about Connor’s hair, the way it feels under his fingertips. The way it falls in his eyes. The way it looks when he’s sweaty. “You got the hots for your boss?”

 

“Connor isn’t my boss,” Dylan said, shaking his head. He wasn’t denying what Mikey was saying, but he also couldn’t elaborate. Couldn’t tell Mikey what it had felt like to hold Connor when he had had a nightmare. How strong-willed Connor was in the face of illicit junk food. How he had the flattest, driest sense of humor, so most people thought he wasn’t funny. How beautiful his eyes looked when he put on one of his blue suits. He could feel the blush on his cheeks, watched Mikey’s lips turn up in a smile just seeing it.

 

“Alright, loverboy, I’ll stop bugging you about it.” But Mikey’s big happy smile was still there, letting Dylan know that Mikey would be there for him regardless of how much he could say.

 

\---

 

Christmas brunch was Dylan’s favorite meal of the entire year. Dylan’s whole mom’s side of the family came over so their house was packed, and every flat surface had any number of breads, meats, egg bakes, fruit bowls, and a juice bar. His older brother was turning out waffles on the waffle maker, and his aunt had made puff pastries with nutella in them. Dylan was in heaven.

 

He was also heavily distracted from the text messages coming into his phone.

 

_What time do we need to be back at the airport tomorrow?_

_Eight-ish right?_

_Here are some Christmas pictures for Instagram._

_Did you get anything cool this year?_

 

He’d ignored his phone for twenty minutes in favor of Ryan’s famous bacon waffles so he had a backlog. He hadn’t texted Connor since they left the airport, and Dylan had this ache of longing for him that felt strangely similar to the homesickness he’d felt for Mississauga when he was in Edmonton.

 

Dylan smiled and took his plate up to his childhood bedroom to have some privacy while responding. His bedroom was tidier than he’d left it, but his bed was messy from the two nights he’d spent there, and it still felt like home, even if it had been a while since he’d lived there for real.

 

He put his plate of food down on his desk and plopped into the desk chair. He’d never really used it for homework, but he did have a good view of his bulletin board that was covered in photos and other high school ephemeria. It made him feel like the teenaged version of him was laminated and preserved in this room.

 

He pulled his phone out again. Saw another text.

 

_Sorry to bother you on Christmas._

 

Dylan shook his head. Of course Connor would think he was bothering Dylan.

 

 _You’re not bothering me. My house is full of people, but it’s kinda lonely here without you._ It was vulnerable to admit, but Dylan liked being vulnerable with Connor. His vulnerability was usually rewarded.

 

The typing bubble popped up in their thread, disappeared, appeared again. Dylan was sure Connor wasn’t actually taking five years to formulate whatever he was about to send, but it felt like it.

 

 _Same here_ , Dylan got back. _It’s nice to see my mom. I missed her so much. And my brother. But I kind of want to go back to Edmonton, even though that’s a different kind of hell._

 

Dylan took a breath. He had a thousand things he wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure how to say them.

 

Instead of getting to reply, Dylan’s phone started buzzing in his hand. Connor was calling.

 

“Hey,” Dylan said with as much affection as he could muster. There had been many, many times when Dylan had seen Connor happy. Seen him laugh with his whole body, smile with his teeth, relax, sigh, melt. But Dylan also knew that it wasn’t Connor’s default state. His default state seemed to be a little more _would-prefer-to-disappear-into-a-forest_.

 

“Hi. I’m sorry. Is this a bad time?” Starting off with an apology. Dylan could confirm with one hundred percent certainty that he was, indeed talking to Connor McDavid.

 

“Naw, I’m sitting in my room with my food, kinda hiding. There are a million people in my house. No one misses me.”

 

“I miss you,” Connor said. Dylan didn’t really understand what was going on in his heart. He felt it clenching and expanding, like he wanted to fold Connor into it.

 

“Same,” Dylan said. He wasn’t sure where to go from there. “New dress shoes,” he said instead. “That’s what I got for Christmas.”

 

“I also got clothes,” Connor told him. “And some art...thing for my house that I have to figure out how to ship out there. Or maybe I’ll just put it in my condo here, I don’t know.”

 

“Are you staying at your condo?”

 

“No, staying with my parents. Doesn’t make sense not to when I’m only here a couple of days. Summer on the other hand? I need the space.”

 

“I hear you,” Dylan said. He could not imagine what it would be like to live with Connor’s dad.

 

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning?” Connor asked. Of course he’d see Dylan for their flight. But Connor liked reassurances, and Dylan was happy to give him as many as he needed.

 

“I’ll be there, eight sharp, ready to kick your ass at Rummy.”

 

“Highly doubt that but okay, buddy, I respect the self-confidence. You’ll need it.” Connor was right. He was much better at cards than Dylan. Dylan was better at video games when he could convince Connor to play. He figured it evened out.

 

After they hung up, Dylan stayed in his room a while, eating the rest of the food on his plate, thinking about how steadying Connor’s voice was to him. How much better he felt after hearing it. He wondered if Connor felt anything similar.

 

\---

 

The season melted into January, and suddenly the race to the playoffs felt much more urgent. Dylan could feel the atmosphere change everywhere—in the room, at Rogers, at Connor’s house, the entire city of Edmonton. The entire Oilers-loving (and hating) half of Alberta, probably. And as January marched on, Dylan could feel the stress emanating directly off of Connor.

 

Dylan hoped that the Oilers Skills Competition would do something to help cheer Connor up, but instead, the morning of, he woke up to his phone buzzing, a text from Connor.

 

_Can you please come here?_

 

And because it was six o’clock in the morning, Dylan didn’t have to ask where ‘here’ was. He just slid out of bed and headed down the hall toward Connor.

 

Dylan padded into Connor’s room, still dark since the winter sun wouldn’t rise for ages. Connor was in bed shaking, face tear-stained, his hair a terrible, terrible disaster. He was shirtless and clutching his duvet, and he scooted toward the center of the bed so Dylan could slip under the covers with him.

 

It was another nightmare, Dylan assumed as he let Connor curl into his chest. Connor was trembling and Dylan hated how familiar this felt. He wraped an arm around Connor’s back, let the other hand smooth Connor’s hair.

 

“Same nightmare?” Dylan asked, the heat of Connor’s bare chest urgent against his own skin.

 

Connor shook his head. “Panic attack I think. I just woke up and thought about skills comp, and how many people are just going to boo us when we hit the ice, how big of a disappointment I am to Edmonton right now. I just. I can’t fucking do it, Dylan. I can’t do it.”

 

Connor had too much on his fucking shoulders, and Dylan was suddenly mad at every single person who looked to Connor to single-handedly “save Edmonton.”

 

“Okay, so you woke up with a stomach bug, and you’ve been vomiting all night, is what I’m hearing,” Dylan said. Connor relaxed away from him, just enough for Dylan to see his face. Dylan wiped one tear-stained cheek and Connor let out a long breath. “I’m going to call in sick for you.”

 

“Shit, people will just hate me more,” Connor said. The anguish was clear on his face. Either way, he would feel shitty and awful.

 

“You can have a bad day at the rink, or you can have a bad day here, with me. We can sleep in a little, I’ll make you something good to eat. It’s your birthday, dude, you can be a little selfish.”

 

“It’s my birthday,” Connor said, like he’d forgotten.

 

“Yeah. And it’s going to be fun, okay? Or at least, no one is going to boo you today.”

 

“Okay,” Connor said, after a long, thoughtful pause.

 

Dylan made a call, balanced the right amount of detail and omission. Being good at calling in sick was an art, and Dylan was an artist. Connor got the order for rest and fluids, and Dylan promised he’d make sure he got both.

 

Dylan hung up his phone and tossed it on Connor’s side table. They stayed in bed and Dylan let Connor drift back to sleep. Dylan was a crusader for Connor’s rest. His priorities shifted after he found out how little sleep Connor functioned on daily, and knowing that he could help make a difference that morning made him feel a little bit successful at least.

 

Plus, there was something about how relaxed Connor looked when he was asleep that Dylan couldn’t get enough of. He carried so much tension on his waking face that smoothed out in sleep. He just kept running his fingers through Connor’s hair until he fell back to sleep himself.

 

\---

 

Dylan ordered steaks from their grocery delivery for dinner, since Connor had been adamant about not having a cake. Steak was fine, and Dylan felt like it was actually something that he as not bad at making.

 

By dinnertime, Connor felt steadier to Dylan. They’d spent their day watching movies and chatting. Connor took a three-hour-long nap on the couch with his head in Dylan’s lap. Dylan hoped that he got to spend the entire summer sleeping, because it was rough seeing how tired he was now.

 

Connor hovered in the kitchen, like he wanted something to do. Dylan put him on vegetable duty, and so Connor chopped broccoli while Dylan seared the steaks on the stovetop before tucking the whole pan into the oven.

 

“I’m sorry your birthday is shitty,” Dylan said, keeping an eye on his timer for the steaks. He wasn’t about to fuck up Connor’s birthday steaks.

 

“It’s not shitty,” Connor said. His arms were crossed in front of him, his hip on the center island. He looked at Dylan seriously, because serious looks were all he had to give out that day. Dylan would have killed a man to hear Connor giggle, even over something stupid. Especially over something stupid. “It’s the best birthday I’ve had in years.”

 

“What?” Dylan asked, genuinely confused. Connor had been moping through the day.

 

“I have the day off, and I get to spend it with my best friend. What’s to be mad about?” He shrugged this little Connor shrug, swept his hair back. It stayed in place in a perfect blonde wave for about point-two seconds before it fell right back to where it had been, right in his eyes. But that was okay. Sometimes the most beautiful things were, definitionally, ephemerial.

 

And Dylan knew it would be less than thirty seconds before Connor did it again.

 

“Your best friend, huh?” Dylan asked, raising his eyebrows at Connor.

 

“I mean, you’re the person I spend most of my time with.”

 

“We live together.”

 

“And I’ve had three guys living in my house—or fucking Taylor Hall’s house, god bless him—in years past, and I barely said three words to them outside of business stuff. I don’t talk to you and hang out with you because you’re here. I mean, that’s really convenient, but it’s not like, _why._ I spend time with you because I like you. Because you’re my friend.”

 

Connor managed to look grumpy about this admission too, but Dylan thought it had more to do with the tough mood of the day than about the content of what he just said. Dylan took it in. Connor was one of the kindest and most generous people he’d ever met. He was sweet, and he made Dylan laugh, and he did everything in his power to make Dylan’s awful job easier.

 

Dylan thought about Mikey back at U of T, and how Mikey was as much his brother as his actual brothers. And then he thought of that B.J. Novak quote about “best friend” being a tier and not a person.

 

“You’re my best friend too,” Dylan said, reaching out for Connor to pull him into a hug. Dylan loved hugging Connor. Loved the feel of Connor’s big body against his own. Connor was shorter than him by a couple inches, but he was buff, hockey built, broad, and gorgeous, and he hugged like he meant it.

 

Dylan patted him on the back as they pulled apart, and for a split second, he wanted to press a kiss to Connor’s forehead. But he held himself back. Best friends. Dylan could do _best friends_ with Connor McDavid. He wasn’t sure he was prepared to do anything else, despite the fact that he clearly wanted to.

 

His timer went off and he hurried to pull the pan out of the oven so he could grab the steaks and let them rest.

 

Connor said they were better than a restaurant, which Dylan knew was a blatant lie. It was a kind Connor thing though. Part politeness, part sincerity, all sweet.

 

\---

 

Dylan knew the phone call was coming. The one where his boss yelled at him for Connor missing Skills Comp. It came late though. It was days after Dylan thought it would happen. His guard was down.

 

It was Thursday afternoon, and Dylan was in his suite, getting some work done and giving Connor some space, because he finally convinced him to invite his friends over.

 

He answered his phone, the screen clearly displaying Richard Andrews. Dylan answered. He got ripped a new one.

 

And he took it. This was something he could do to cushion Connor from the blow, and he took it willingly. He’d answered on speaker out of habit, since he usually used both hands to type notes, and his cell slipped from between his shoulder and his ear more than once.

 

He hadn’t realized that his room was echoing with the sound of him getting yelled at. How loud it was, how the sound was escaping out of his suite.

 

The call log said he’d been getting yelled at for twenty minutes when he finally hung up, but it had felt like several hours. When he finally got off the call, he took a breath, stood up from his desk chair, and let himself fall onto his couch. He felt like he might cry. He felt like he might get fired. He had to keep reminding himself that Connor had a good birthday, and he was the only one who could give him that.

 

There was a soft knock on his door.

 

“Yeah?” he asked, trying to sound composed. His voice sounded strangled even to him. He couldn’t imagine what it sounded like to someone else.

 

The door cracked open, and Connor poked his head in. “You okay?”

 

“I’m fine. Your buds are downstairs. You should hang out with them.”

 

“Leaving on a roadie tomorrow. I’ll see them plenty.” Connor slowly slipped into Dylan’s room, slow enough that Dylan could put up a boundary. But Dylan didn’t want to push him away. He wanted Connor to come closer. Connor shut the door behind him.

 

Dylan sat up on the couch and Connor joined him, tucked Dylan under his shoulder. Dylan wasn’t used to this, being the upset one. Of the two of them, Connor had more stress and pressure on his shoulders. Dylan had a one-season job that would catapult him out of Edmonton in a matter of months. Connor had a long-term, hundred-million-dollar contract. And a really soft sweatshirt for Dylan to press his face into.

 

“I heard what he was saying,” Connor said. “I’m sorry.”

 

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Dylan said.

 

“I do,” Connor said. “I...I know you took the heat for me. I could hear you. Hear your voice. Thank you.”

 

“You don’t have to thank me.”

 

“Dylan, I don’t know what you think it was like here before you, but...it wasn’t this. It wasn’t someone caring about me as a person, that’s for sure. And. You clearly do. It’s been forever since I felt that.”

 

It was a sad fucking thing for Connor to admit. That it had been a long time since he felt like someone cared about him. And Dylan couldn’t help but care a lot.

 

He could feel himself calming down, pressed against Connor’s body. Connor took a breath himself.

 

“So you want me to go grab a pack of cards or something?” Connor asked. Dylan had a special fondness for how much technology pained Connor. He’d choose cards over video games, and Dylan would never understand it. He loved watching Connor struggle with his phone or computer. 

 

“You’re really going to ask an upset man to lose to you at cards?”

 

“I guess I am,” Connor laughed, his arm tightening around Dylan’s shoulders, a quick squeeze.

 

“Well, I’ve got a pack in here somewhere,” Dylan said, heading into his room to root around his carryon suitcase.

 

Connor beat him at a few hands of Rummy, then reached out to touch his arm, gentle but present. Sure. “You wanna go downstairs? The boys are playing that game you like, I think.”

 

“Fortnite?” Dylan asked, shaking his head at Connor.

 

“Yeah,” Connor said. “Come spend time with us.”

 

Dylan could hear the ‘please’ at the end of his sentence. He had a sneaking suspicion that if he didn’t go with Connor, Connor would stay up here with him. And that wasn’t fair to Connor, or to Leon or Darnell or Chaiser.

 

He went. And the boys didn’t treat him weird. Dylan knew they’d heard him getting reamed out. But Dylan figured they were Oilers. It’s not like they hadn’t been yelled at by their boss this year. Leon clapped him on the back with an unspoken thank you. Dylan liked Leon.

 

\---

 

Connor had the afternoon off, and Dylan was dead-set on taking them out of the house, on the town. He’d been reading about how good float tanks were for athletes—aches and pains, anxiety, relaxation. Seemed like something that would do Connor some good.

 

Plus, Dylan wanted to try it.

 

Connor had a good attitude about it, because he had this unflinching desire to do whatever it takes, try whatever it takes, to make himself the best he could be. That’s how Dylan pitched it to him when he’d suggested it, because Dylan knew Connor.

 

“A whole hour in there, huh?” Connor said, as they walked into the float spa. His hair was getting pretty long, and it hadn’t yet found a natural part. It just cascaded down to frame his face. Dylan wasn’t sure if it was because he grew up crushing on hockey players, or if it was because it was legitimately, objectively attractive, but he was very into what Connor’s hair was currently doing. Dylan thought about how it would soon be wet.

 

“Sixty minutes alone with your thoughts,” Dylan teased. Connor blanched, just slightly, and Dylan felt like a dick. “I’m sorry, man. You know what I mean.”

 

Connor reached out to grab his wrist, gave it a squeeze. Forgiveness. “I’m more worried about you than me,” he teased back.

 

The float spa was quiet and serene. Dylan felt more relaxed just being there, quiet music on in the background.

 

The receptionist led them through the drill. Get naked, rinse off in the shower, hop in the tank. Hot tub jets turn on to let you know your time is over, and you just shower after you get out. Don’t touch your eyes.

 

Seemed straightforward enough.

 

“See you on the other side,” Connor said, leaving Dylan’s little float room to go to his own. Dylan closed the door, locked it.

 

It had been a long season and it was only January. Dylan was working on overdrive trying to take care of Connor. He spent every waking moment thinking about how to make Connor happy. How to make sure that doing his job didn’t get too much in the way of his and Connor’s friendship. He did very little thinking about himself.

 

He stripped and rinsed off under the shower. The tank was less of a pod and more of a really big bathtub with a door on it. The ceiling was high, which he appreciated. Connor had asked about that too—feeling claustrophobic in a little pod. Dylan hoped Connor was doing okay.

 

And there it was again. Continually diverting his energy to thinking about how Connor was doing.

 

He opened the door to the tank and carefully stepped in. It was humid in there, the air thick and a little difficult to breathe. But the water was warm as he stepped in.

 

He sat down and leaned back, not trusting the water to hold him. There were a thousand pounds of Epsom salts dissolved in his tub, somehow, and he took deep breaths as he let his body relax and float.

 

The quiet music continued and his breathing was slowed by the humidity in the air. He reached over to the light control the receptionist had shown them and flicked the light off.

 

He couldn’t answer emails. He couldn’t post on social media. He couldn’t get yelled at. He couldn’t _do_ anything, laying in that salty water. Even his worry about Connor—who he knew was safe and salty in his own tub—didn’t feel productive like it usually did.

 

The music washed over him. He didn’t think he had ever been as comfortable as this in his entire life.

 

Slowly, the lights faded back on, the jets came on, and his hour was over.

 

He met Connor back in the lobby, Connor’s wet hair under a backward snapback, a dopey smile on his face. He looked...happy. His bearded face was looking fuzzy and soft and Dylan just wanted to kiss him. He wanted it so bad.

 

Instead, he knocked his shoulder into Connor’s. “How’d it go?”

 

“Trying to figure out where I can put one of those in my house,” Connor said.

 

“Connor McDavid?” a voice said. Dylan watched as Connor put on his _meeting a fan_ face, reached out to shake the hand of the guy who had said his name. He looked older than Connor and Dylan. Maybe mid-thirties. His wife was with him. Their hair was dry like they hadn’t floated yet.

 

“Hi, nice to meet you,” Connor said. The guy shook his hand, but also shook his head.

 

“You know, kid, I’ve been an Oilers fan for longer than you’ve been alive, and I gotta say, I wish you guys were giving it more out there. You’re making me ashamed.”

 

“James, honestly,” his wife said, rolling her eyes. She was clearly used to this. What a treat.

 

“No, I’m serious. If we really had the best hockey player in the world on our team, I wouldn’t be doubting making playoffs every year,” the guy continued.

 

Dylan stepped in, seeing the nice-guy face Connor was trying to maintain slip. “Dude, c’mon,” he said, shaking his head right back at the guy. The stranger, who thought he had the right to say those things to Connor. “Hope you have a great rest of your day,” he told him, in the most passive-aggressive Canadian farewell he could manage. He steered Connor out of the lobby with a hand on Connor’s lower back, grateful that he’d paid over the phone when he’d booked their appointments.

 

He kept his hand on Connor’s back until they got out to Dylan’s car. They hopped in, and Dylan turned the music off. Let Connor have a second of quiet.

 

“I can’t believe—” Dylan started.

 

“Everyone has an opinion,” Connor said. He was trying to have a stiff upper lip about it, but Dylan could tell he was affected.

 

“Sushi,” Dylan said.

 

“Huh?”

 

“Let’s get some sushi, go home and forget about this guy. We can still have a good evening, alright?” Sushi was the go-to treat that Dylan had figured out. Connor would eat sushi happily. It was good for him, and still felt a little special. Dylan had never eaten as much sushi in his life before this year.

 

There had been about a two-minute window after Connor had gotten out of the float tank where Dylan had thought he looked so relaxed and happy. And some asshole ruined that immediately. Even with sushi and hockey on that night, Connor stayed tense and grumpy. And Dylan really couldn’t blame him.

 

\---

 

Connor came home from the Flames game with another loss under his belt, stitches above his eye, and no GM.

 

He was in a black mood. Dylan was fine-tuned to Connor’s moods. Connor’s moods usually had a certain subtlety to them, but not tonight. He slammed the door on the way in, dropped his bag to the floor, headed upstairs without saying a word to Dylan. Dylan thought that Chiarelli getting fired would maybe put Connor in a good mood. It seemed to have done the opposite.

 

Dylan heard Connor’s bedroom door close. He waited. He was just watching dumb videos on YouTube. He fell into a rabbit hole from a funny video Mikey sent him. He was ostensibly trying to get some of his ducks in a row before the All-Star Game, but he was working harder on the group text with his brothers than anything else. He gave Connor a half hour. Forty minutes. At the hour mark, Dylan shut the house down for the night and headed up to bed. Connor wasn’t coming back down to talk to him.

 

He couldn’t get Connor off his mind. All Dylan could think about was Connor’s stormy eyes, his defeated shoulders in his post-game. Dylan had watched the game. He watched every game. Their fans booed them. That always cut Connor to the core.

 

They had another game the very next day, then one more before All-Star. It all felt like too much.

 

Dylan tossed and turned, the motion-sensor lights from the backyard flicking on and off as wind-blown branches triggered them, changing the light in his room constantly, just as restless outside as he was in his bed. He grabbed his phone off his side table, scrolled Instagram a little. Social media was starting to feel like his workplace. It was giving him a headache.

 

Then his phone buzzed.

 

_I can’t sleep. Will you come play cards with me?_

_I’m sorry if you’re sleeping._

 

Dylan smiled. Part of him had been waiting for this. That was probably why he couldn’t let himself settle into sleep.

 

It was two in the morning.

 

Dylan padded down the hall to Connor’s room. The ceiling lights were off, but the side table lamp was on, a warm yellow glow washing over Conno’s bed. Connor was sitting on his bed cross-legged and bare-chested, shuffling a deck of cards.

 

“Hey,” he said. He looked a little more relaxed than he had when he’d gotten home. Connor flipped his sheets and blanket down to make some room for Dylan. The bed was warm where Dylan sat down, facing Connor, where Connor’s legs would be when he laid down to sleep. “I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

 

“Naw, I was tossing and turning too.” He was close to Connor. Not close enough for their knees to touch, but too close to really have any space to play cards. Dylan reached out to check out the stitches Connor got, gently brushing his hair away to take a look while making sure not to touch his actual stitches. He dropped his eyes to Connor’s. “That hurt?”

 

“Yeah, stick up under the visor never feels good.”

 

“Stupid question. I just…”

 

“I know you care, dude,” Connor said gently. Yeah. That’s what Dylan was trying to figure out how to say.

 

Dylan smiled at him. “Rummy?”

 

“Yeah,” Connor said. They had a running game going that Dylan was keeping track of in a spreadsheet on his phone. Connor was winning. It didn’t matter what card game they played, Connor tended to win. Dylan wanted to figure out something they were more equally footed on. Maybe he’d buy a chess set.

 

Dylan scooted back far enough for them to lay out cards between them, and once again Dylan found himself up in the middle of the night, making sure Connor was happy. If it was any other person on planet earth, Dylan would have been pretty fucking over it by now.

 

Instead, he played cards with Connor for almost an hour, until Connor’s eyelids were drooping.

 

“Bedtime for real now, I think,” Dylan said after losing another hand. He carefully added their counted points to the spreadsheet for next time. It was getting embarrassing.

 

“You’re staying, right?” Connor asked. He tried to look casual about it, but Dylan thought he knew what was happening. He wondered if Connor had even wanted to play cards at all, or if he’d just wanted an excuse for Dylan to be there.

 

“Yeah,” Dylan said. They rearranged to lay together, Connor folding into his chest like he belonged there, face against his shoulder, careful of his stitches. It was hard to be this close to Connor and know that all this was was a little human contact for a touch-starved boy. Still, Dylan scratched up through Connor’s long hair, savoring it. He thought it would probably have to go soon. Might as well enjoy it while it lasted.

 

“Dylan?” Connor’s voice was tiny in the night.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“What the actual fuck would I be doing this season without you. Like, what if they’d sent me another mid-thirties corporate douche who wanted to micromanage every dump I took?”

 

“Did your previous guys track that? Should I be tracking that?” 

 

“No you fucking shouldn’t be tracking that you psycho.” Dylan smiled. He absolutely no intention of tracking that. But he did like the way Connor’s laughter rang through his own chest too.

 

There was empty silence for long enough that Dylan thought Connor might be drifting off.

 

“I don’t think I can keep doing this. Keep playing for this losing team year after year. I’m supposed to fix this. I’m supposed to make sure we win.”

 

“You’re pulling your weight. More than. Everyone and their brother knows it. People in Florida know it.”

 

“No one in Florida knows what hockey is.”

 

“I’m sure there are people who know who you are in Florida. Maybe like, six or even seven.”

 

“Shut up,” Connor said. Dylan didn’t know what it would take to make Connor happy, but happiness seemed further and further away every day. “I’m trapped here.”

 

“You’re not trapped,” Dylan said, even though of course Connor was. He didn’t exactly have a wealth of options.

 

“I am.”

 

Dylan didn’t know what else to do but pull him tighter, tangle their legs together.

 

\---

 

Dylan woke up to gentle movement, and to a rock-hard dick. He was grinding his hips slowly, the action returned by—by Connor.

 

_Fuck._

 

Dylan opened his eyes. Connor was pressed tight against him, his breath coming hot and damp on Dylan’s neck. His hips just kept rolling into Dylan’s thigh until Connor’s hot breaths became little whimpers. Dylan kind of wanted to let him keep going like this, sweetly asleep and chasing some release. Part of him wanted to just stick his hand down Connor’s underwear and help him out. But the last part knew he had to wake Connor up.

 

“Con,” Dylan whispered, shaking Connor awake gently by the shoulder.

 

“Mmmm,” Connor says, pressing closer to Dylan, letting out a little gasp before finally waking up enough to realize what was going on.

 

“Shit,” Connor said, springing back from Dylan, putting space between them. “Shit, Dyl, I’m sorry.”

 

Connor was bright red, looking at Dylan scared.

 

“Hey, hey,” Dylan said, reaching back out toward Connor. “It’s okay.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Connor said again. He apologized a lot in general. Dylan wanted him to stop. He never had anything to be sorry for.

 

“I’m serious, man. It’s okay. It’s normal. I...me too. I, when I woke up. Me too.” It was Dylan’s turn to blush.

 

“I guess it’s...natural,” Connor said.

 

“Of course it is,” Dylan said. It was natural, but they still had the problem that they were both pretty worked up, in the same bed together. It was something like four am. Dylan was half asleep and horny. Connor was gorgeous and basically the only thing that occupied Dylan’s mind. Dylan didn’t always make the best choices when horny. “Um, obviously you can turn this down but um. What if we helped each other out. Just, it’s the middle of the night. I don’t want to get out of bed. It was feeling really good…”

 

He couldn’t look Connor in the eye, but he could see him enough to see Connor also wasn’t looking at him. Connor inched back toward him. “Okay,” he said, tentatively.

 

“It’ll help us get back to sleep,” Dylan said, reaching out to place a hand on Connor’s hip. Connor slid closer still, until they were almost pressed together. Then Dylan slid his hand to the back of Connor’s waist and pulled him home.  

 

Connor groaned when their hips aligned again, and tucked his face against Dylan’s neck. Dylan wanted to put his mouth all over Connor, cover every inch of skin. But the objective of this situation was a middle-of-the-night orgasm, and that was all Dylan felt was allowed.

 

They were both on their sides, but Dylan slid his hand down to Connor’s ass, eased onto his own back. At some point Connor had balled his fists into Dylan’s t-shirt, stayed balanced as Dylan pulled Connor a little on top of him.

 

Dylan gasped, the change of angle adding more pressure. It let Connor take control. Dylan had felt close to coming when they’d woken up like this, and now Connor was halfway on top of him, letting out these breathy moans that Dylan was pretty sure were unholy.

 

Connor pressed his hands against Dylan’s chest, lifted his upper body away from Dylan’s. From this angle, Connor’s body was on display, and Dylan could see, even in the dim light, the way Connor’s hips were working against his own.

 

“Fuck, Dylan, I’m gonna—” Connor started to say. He looked down at Dylan, mouth open in pleasure, and it was the eye contact that brought Dylan over the edge. Moments later, Connor was coming too, shaking against Dylan’s body. He collapsed on Dylan’s chest, face tucking back into Dylan’s neck.

 

Dylan’s hands came up to grab Connor’s shoulders on instinct. Dylan caught his breath slowly, could feel Connor’s breathing slow as well.

 

“Wow,” Connor said, breath warm on Dylan’s skin. Dylan shivered.

 

“Yeah,” Dylan agreed. He didn’t feel like his heartbeat would ever slow down. But they stayed like that for long minutes, until the mess in their boxers became unbearable.

 

Connor got up, blush high on his cheeks when he looked at Dylan. “New underwear,” he said, climbing out of bed and pulling two pairs of boxers out of his dresser. He threw one to Dylan, who changed and wiped himself as clean as possible under the covers. Connor turned his back to Dylan for some semblance of privacy. Dylan didn’t know if he’d ever shared an orgasm with someone he hadn’t seen naked before.

 

Dylan was very worried this sudden hesitance would translate to awkwardness. But Connor just slipped back under the covers and reclaimed his spot curled against Dylan’s body. Connor was still sleep-warm. He felt substantial in Dylan’s arms, real.

 

Dylan wasn’t sure if it was the exhaustion, the cuddling, or the orgasm, but Connor slept through the rest of the night. No nightmares.

 

\---

 

“You’re the best hockey player in the _world!_ You’re the prince of Edmonton, the bringer of joy to people young and old. So many people are excited to meet you, excited to get their photo taken with you, you’re going to make so many people happy today,” Dylan said, bouncing in the driver’s seat of his car, Kendrick Lamar on in the background.

 

Dylan was desperately, desperately trying to hype Connor up into a good mood. The Oilers had dropped yet another game (and pretty seriously), and it was fan photo day. They’d head over to Rogers soon, but first on the docket: Connor was getting his hair cut.

 

“This is a sad, sad day,” Connor said. He was down and out. The Oilers just kept losing, no matter how Connor tried to carry the team on his shoulders. The media was getting aggressive. Fans were upset. _Connor’s team_ had said it was time to cut the shit: the hair had to go. Connor had cleaned up his beard himself that morning, Dylan sitting on the counter in Connor’s bathroom, pep-talking him through it.

 

“I genuinely believe you are going to make so many people happy today,” Dylan said as they pulled into the salon’s parking lot. Connor rolled his eyes at him, but the corner of his mouth quirked up a bit. Dylan counted it as a win.

 

Connor’s favorite hairdresser came off a recommendation. She used to cut Taylor Hall’s hair. And there was a private hair studio in the back so no one could watch him (i.e. film him) getting a haircut.

 

Nicki was covered in tattoos, and Dylan noticed, while she and Connor chatted about what style he wanted, she had a pair of scissors inked on her wrist.

 

“How short are we going?” She asked, and Connor looked over at Dylan.

 

“How short are you willing?” Dylan asked back. Connor’s dad had attached a photo of Connor’s 2016-17 roster photo to their email chain. Connor looked so fucking sulky in it. It was kind of perfect.

 

“Not as short as my dad wants it,” Connor laughed. Nicki combed her fingers through his hair to see what she was working with, and the two of them talked about it some more.

 

Dylan liked Nicki. She didn’t talk about hockey directly, but she clearly followed it. She’d recently been down to visit her cousin in San Jose, and recommended a few restaurants she’d really liked, since All-Star was the next thing on their docket. Dylan noted them, in case Connor wanted to try one.

 

When she was all done, she spun Connor around in the styling chair to show off Connor’s new look. It was still long on top but cleaned up. Dylan was still into it. “Looks great,” he said genuinely. Connor gave him a crooked Connor McDavid smile.

 

The floor was absolutely covered in his cut off hair. It looked like way more than had ever possibly been on his head. He took a photo of Connor’s new look to add to the official haircut email thread. He watched Connor pay and leave a big tip.

 

Then they headed to Rogers.

 

They parked in player parking as usual, and were herded immediately into a green room to a strategy meeting so everyone knew their roles. There were lines out the door already, but per Connor’s contract, there were only a limited number of fans who had won a lottery who would be able to be photographed with him.

 

Connor’s photo station was off the beaten path, and he and Dylan followed the coordinator in charge of him, as well as a bodyguard up to his station. A photographer was getting set up, a big Canon on a tripod. Connor got settled on a high chair.

 

And then they were off.

 

\---

 

Connor was tired and grumpy at the end of the day. Dylan was fresh out of hype. They drove home in silence, and Dylan microwaved them some pre-prepared food for dinner.

 

Connor had a lot to be grumpy about, and Dylan didn’t know how else to break this news to him. The flood of emails he’d received that all agreed: The hair was not short enough. Connor needed to get another haircut before All-Star Weekend.

 

What a pain in the ass.

 

Dylan had already stepped away to make another hair appointment with Nicki for Wednesday.

 

They had a game on the TV. There was always hockey on in Connor’s house. Dylan liked the way Connor watched hockey. It was like Dylan could see the hamster spinning on the wheel of Connor’s brain. It wasn’t news that Connor had crazy hockey IQ, but it was another thing to see him process the way other teams were playing.

 

It was, like everything Connor did now, very hot.

 

“I have bad news,” Dylan said. He was working on cutting his chicken breast up into nervous, microscopic pieces.

 

“Fuck, everything is bad news lately,” Connor said. He wasn’t done with his food yet, but he slumped back against the couch, plate now lonely on the coffee table.

 

“Apparently you’re going to need another haircut. Before All-Star.”

 

“Wow,” Connor said. He shook his head. “Jesus, it feels like nothing is ever fucking enough.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Dylan said.

 

“I’m not mad at you. I know you have my back.” Connor said this at least twice a week. Dylan was still struggling with balancing actually doing his job duties and trying to keep Connor happy. Which surprisingly was _not_ one of his job duties. Coordinating the company that cleaned Connor’s house was on his task list, but making Connor smile was noticeably not there.

 

Dylan abandoned his own plate, and Connor leaned into him, like he needed that. Needed to be held. He was coming off of back-to-back games, and had another one the next day. Dylan could feel how tired Connor was in how heavily Connor was resting against him. Dylan could feel the weight of his body along with his responsibilities. He wrapped an arm around Connor’s shoulder and Connor melted into him.

 

They stayed like that, Dylan absently running a hand through Connor’s hair, mourning his long hair.

 

They detangled when intermission was over in order to finish their dinners. Dylan snuck up to his room to get beers from his illicit stash, and Connor, for once, did not argue about Dylan trying to bend the rules for him.

 

Connor tapped out early, so tired he couldn’t hold his eyes open past nine-thirty. He carried their dishes to the kitchen, and Dylan followed. If Connor was going to bed, Dylan might as well make his way up to his suite.

 

“Would you, you can say no, but can you, um—”

 

“Spit it out, dude,” Dylan said, gently. Connor was clearly nervous about asking whatever it was he was about to ask.

 

“Will you come with me?”

 

“To bed?” Dylan asked.

 

Connor looked at him, eyes hollowed, skin pale, arms hanging heavy. He nodded, like it took a lot of effort to even do that.

 

Dylan squeezed his bicep—a mistake, fuck Dylan did not need a reminder of how strong Connor was right before getting into bed with him. “Yeah, no problem.”

 

“Thanks, Dylan.”

 

“I’m going to get ready and stuff. Gimme ten minutes?” Connor nodded.

 

It felt like a habit at that point, to knock softly before entering Connor’s room. To take his spot on the other side of Connor’s bed. Even the way Connor snuggled into him was familiar by that point.

 

Dylan was a little nervous. The last time he’d slept in Connor’s bed, they’d rubbed off against each other in the middle of the night, then never addressed it. He kind of wanted it to happen again that night.

 

Instead, Connor just woke Dylan up in the middle of the night because he was thrashing through a nightmare. Dylan made him sit up, made him sip some water, told him stories about the dog he had growing up. Connor just looked at him with hollow eyes, a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

 

They were still close, Dylan hovering. Dylan didn’t think he’d had a real, actual, wake-up-sweating nightmare since high school. When Connor slipped a hand into Dylan’s, Dylan gave it a squeeze.

 

There wasn’t a lot of hair left to brush off of Connor’s forehead, but Dylan did it anyway. Mostly for himself. “Alright,  wanna try this again?”

 

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

 

“Stop apologizing,” Dylan said, something fond in his voice.

 

\---

 

On Wednesday, they went to see Nicki again, and Connor showed her last year’s roster pic. He had such a good attitude about it that Dylan wants to scream. Wanted to break something for him.

 

He added a new photo to the email, Connor smiling that close-mouthed smile that meant he was feeling absolutely no joy.

 

\---

 

“We’re going to need another person to carry all this shit,” Connor said, looking at the sheer volume of bags Dylan had prepped. Dylan was in charge of packing for himself and packing all the clothes Connor needed to be seen wearing. That wasn’t really something he’d thought of as a concern of a hockey player before he started this job, but Connor had clothing sponsors, and they were packed. Along with a travel steamer.

 

Travel steamers also weren’t part of the life Dylan had imagined for a professional athlete.

 

Connor’s bag was just his usual road trip bag, with his overnight stuff, sweats, toiletries, his deck of cards, his iPad. Dylan felt like a pack mule in comparison, but Connor helped to grab their bags out of the trunk when they got to the airport.

 

They met Leon and his girlfriend at the airport. Dylan had booked all their tickets so they could sit together. It felt like a double date in some respects. Dylan thought that was a perfectly normal way for any two people hanging out with a couple to feel. He wondered what Connor was thinking as he shot glances over at Leon and Celeste where they were holding hands in the VIP lounge before boarding.

 

Dylan could feel the ghost of the weight of Connor’s hand in his own from the other night, when Connor reached out for comfort. He wanted that again, but he didn’t think he was allowed to want that. Didn’t think he was allowed to ask. Connor, however, could ask.

 

\---

 

They were assigned adjoining hotel rooms, the kind that have the interior doors that open directly into the room one over. Connor had whipped his door open immediately and pounded down Dylan’s so their hotel rooms became one shared space. They’d gotten in early on Friday, and had a couple of hours before the media hustle started. Connor flopped on Dylan’s bed.

 

“They’re just going to ask me about how much the Oilers suck right now,” Connor complained. He was still in his plane clothes, loose jeans and a hoodie. Dylan was pulling their nice clothes out of a garment bag and hanging them up, debating whether to start steaming them now or later. Instead, he opted for shuffling the hangers on the rack to sound busy while he actually stared at the little slice of skin above Connor’s waistline that he could see.

 

Obviously, Dylan knew what Connor looked like shirtless, but it was different like this, with him in cozy clothes, stretched out and complaining on Dylan’s bed. It was soft. It made Dylan’s brain think the scariest, most off-limits thought: _Mine_.

 

“I hate that I have to keep acknowledging that it’s such a privilege to be here. The other guys are on fucking vacation and I have more journalists in my face.”

 

“I wish they’d leave you alone too. It would be nice to have a vacation for sure.”

 

“Fuck, Dyl. This is like, way more work for you too,” Connor said like he'd just realized it. Once he got warmed up, Connor was a world-class complainer, and he was on fire that day.

 

“It’s cool. I get to hang out with my best friend, and I got a brand new suit out of it, so,” Dylan shrugged. This was the biggest weekend of the season for him, honestly. He’d been planning and working on shit for All-Star for months. Some partnerships had been in the works since before he got his job. It was all very serious and stressful. He was trying not to leak his feelings onto Connor. Connor had enough to worry about.

 

“What if I’m not the fastest skater?” his voice was small and tight. It was a stupid thing to worry about.

 

“Well then, I’ll still like you,” Dylan said. Connor gave him a weak laugh.

 

“Can you come here?” Connor asked, voice breaking into a whine at the end of it. Connor had been on edge for weeks, and Dylan was legitimately concerned for his mental health. He saw a sports therapist twice a month, but Dylan got the feeling that Connor didn’t open up much. Plus, what do you even talk about with a sports therapist? Your power play? Dylan didn’t know. It’s not like Dylan had ever been to one.

 

Connor was already reaching out for him when Dylan hit the edge of the bed. Connor was flopped off the end a little, legs hanging. Dylan looked at his watch. They had a few hours before they were due for anything. They could cuddle.

 

Cuddling was also not something he’d anticipated out of this job. Add it to the list.

 

Dylan climbed into bed and fluffed the pillows behind him, leaning against the headboard. He spread his legs.

 

“C’mere, lay on my chest,” Dylan said, and Connor rolled over and climbed between Dylan’s legs so they were front-to-front, Connor’s head on Dylan’s chest. Dylan’s fingers drifted into Connor’s hair, and he was alarmed at how short it was. Dylan kind of hated it, hated that it smelled so good because of the wax he put in it. Hated that he looked so handsome with it. Hated that it felt so different than it had just days before.

 

“You wanna find something on TV or something? Or listen to Spittin’ Chiclets?” Dylan asked. Connor was scheduled to go on Biz’s podcast the next morning with Leon, and they’d been listening to them all week, talking through how Connor would respond to certain questions. Biz would try to needle him into saying something controversial, and controversial wasn’t Connor’s _brand._

 

“I just want quiet if that’s okay,” Connor requested. He was laying on Dylan’s chest, arms wrapped around his waist in the little triangle gap of space created by how Dylan was leaning against the headboard. It was nice, just being there together, having a quiet moment, the two of them.

 

Dylan felt like he kept unpeeling layers to the Connor onion, and a few weeks ago Mikey had been talking about how one of his friends, Nate, was this like, really outgoing guy, but needed so much downtime to recover from being this big loud personality that he was. That he was so introverted. Dylan had heard that word before, but it wasn’t something that really popped out of his brain.

 

But that was Connor to a T. Not that he was outgoing like Mikey’s friend. But he needed time alone to recharge. Needed quiet time. Dylan had been googling about it. It wasn’t just people, but stimulus in general, so right now when Connor was feeling the need to recharge, someone chattering in his ear about inane hockey shit probably wasn’t really welcome.

 

Connor could have gone back to his own room to recharge alone, but he was here, requesting cuddles from Dylan. And maybe it was dumb because it was, you know, his job or whatever. But it made Dylan feel special.

 

\---

 

Media and the red carpet was that night. Connor was wearing this gray suit that someone had paid him to wear, and Dylan was probably biased, but it made him want to eat Connor alive.

 

“I would have picked blue,” Connor complained. Dylan let it roll off his back. Connor was allowed to complain to one human on this entire planet, and it was Dylan. So Dylan let him.

 

“You get to wear blue tomorrow. You look good, man.” Dylan had steamed this suit within an inch of his life, and yeah, it wasn’t what he had chosen for Connor either, but they were both making the best of the situation.

 

“And I can’t wear a belt?” He had some kind of tie like a pair of sweatpants in front, and that was apparently an essential part of the look. Or something.

 

“The instructions were very clear,” Dylan said.  

 

Dylan tried not to be star-struck seeing all these hockey players he usually only saw on his TV in the wild, but then he had to remind himself that the best hockey player in the world cracked his back that morning after they got off the plane, so he was trying to have a ‘hockey players are people’ attitude about it.

 

He stuck to his very rigid Instagram posting schedule and got a lot of good candid shots of Connor too, which he maybe was just going to file away for himself. The evening was a blur, but Dylan’s favorite part, hands down, was how nice Connor was to all the kids who asked for his autograph or wanted to tell him how much they loved him. Connor could muster enough patience for adults, but always had endless patience for kids.

 

It made Dylan’s heart squeeze a bit as he watched Connor sign teeny jerseys.

 

When they got back to their hotel rooms they showered, and Connor wandered into Dylan’s room and climbed into his bed next to him and cuddled against him without asking, like it was normal. That weekend was so not normal that Dylan wasn’t surprised that Connor wasn’t handling it great.

 

“I wish you were on every road trip,” Connor said into Dylan’s shoulder. The hotel room had two double beds, so they had significantly less space than in Connor’s huge king-sized bed at home. It kind of forced them out of options. Double beds were not made for two grown men with a platonic friendship. In a king-sized bed they would have cuddled anyway, but here there was no choice.

 

Dylan had been on a couple of one-game road trips, but he’d never been on anything extensive or multi-night. Never slept in the same hotel bed as Connor. “And how would you explain my presence on every road trip?”

 

“Comfort blanket,” Connor mumbled. Dylan melted a little.

 

“The best player in all of hockey could probably get away with that,” Dylan said.

 

“I’m so tired,” Connor complained. Dylan’s smile went soft for him. Connor flipped around so Dylan could spoon him, and Dylan flicked the bedside lamp off and scootched up right behind Connor, his ass pressed against Dylan’s crotch. If he wasn’t so fucking tired himself, it might have been a problem. Instead of thinking about it, he just wrapped his arms around Connor and tucked his face against the back of Connor’s neck.

 

There were only two nightmares to wake Connor up from that night, which Dylan thought was probably pretty good for such a high-stress situation.

 

\---

 

The Skills Competition was so long and drawn out that after Connor won fastest skater, Dylan hunkered down to just work on some emails in a coach’s room that some staff for other All-Stars were hanging out in. Natalie from the Oilers was there too, and they chatted while trying to get work done.

 

The competition was on every TV in the room, and it felt like every time Dylan looked up when a flash of orange caught his eye, Connor was laughing with Mark Scheifele. Connor was making Mark fucking Scheifele _giggle._

 

Dylan knew Scheifele was one of Connor’s friends he trained with back home because Connor had mentioned it on their flight to San Jose, being excited to see his friend.

 

Dylan didn’t want to begrudge Connor his friends. But Dylan had seen Connor with his friends, and it wasn’t like this. This looked like flirting. And there was nothing to do other than either acknowledge the fact that he was jealous, or try to ignore it. And there would be no ignoring it.

 

Natalie left to get some footage of Leon in the passing competition and Dylan went with her, phone out, ostensibly working. What he saw instead was Scheifele’s gloved hand resting on Connor’s heavily padded thigh and he turned around and went right back down the tunnel to the offices.

 

\---

 

Dylan had a backlog of emails, but when Connor came out of the locker room with a big, genuine smile on his face and asked Dylan to go to dinner with him and Scheifele, Dylan couldn’t turn it down. Firstly because he was fucking starving, and secondly because when Mark came up to them, he put his hand on the small of Connor’s back, and Dylan suddenly had the urge to murder him.

 

They got burgers, and Connor didn’t make a stink about how fucking terrible they look for him. He ate the fries, leaning in close to Mark to hear him talk. Mark asked polite questions of Dylan every so often, and part of Dylan was happy that Connor clearly has someone on his side. He needed as many of those kinds of people as possible.

 

But at the same time, Mark kept reaching across the table to touch Connor’s hands or arms, and while Connor had his knee pressed against Dylan’s thigh, Dylan couldn’t help but be jealous.

 

They got back to the hotel room late. Connor had two beers which meant he wasn’t even close to being drunk, but he was just slightly loose. There was no reason to worry about his performance in the actual All-Star Game. No one gave a shit about it.

 

Dylan was grumpy. He could go without hearing about how nice it was to see Mark, okay? Dylan got it. Connor likes Mark. He couldn’t stop thinking about the big giggly smile on Connor’s face through all of dinner. The way Connor wrapped his arms around Mark’s neck when they hugged goodnight.

 

“Thanks for coming to dinner with me,” Connor said, pulling his clothes off and tossing them on the floor. Dylan didn’t care. Connor had a thousand outfits to get through, and even if he did have to wear that suit again, Dylan had that fucking steamer. Dylan kicked the pile of discarded suit into the corner of the room, a little more aggressively than necessary.

 

“Yeah. Super fun.” He couldn’t help the bitterness in his voice.

 

“Are you okay?” Connor asked. “I’m really glad Mark got to meet you. He’s been bugging me to meet the guy I don’t stop talking about.”

 

There was a strange duality fighting in Dylan’s stomach. Jealousy spiked with something that felt like...butterflies.

 

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m. He’s the guy?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Your guy, your summer guy?” Dylan asked. Connor had mentioned that he had a casual hookup with one of his summer workout buddies. He hadn’t specified who. It seemed obvious now.

 

Connor blushed but didn’t look too shy or bashful. He just looked confused. “Yeah, Mark and I sometimes...in the summer, you know, just friends.” He shrugged.

 

“Okay.” Dylan didn’t know how to not be weird about this. He didn’t want to talk about how shitty it felt every time he watched Mark touch him. It was still fucking _January._ Dylan had a long way left to go in this season, a lot to not fuck up. He felt like he was on the verge of fucking something up.

 

“You’re being weird,” Connor said. He had been slowly coming closer to Dylan, just in his underwear and socks, cautious look on his face.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m just…” He couldn’t say what he wanted to say. He didn’t know what else to say.

 

Connor didn’t stop until he was right in front of him, until he put his hands on Dylan’s waist, tilted his head up to meet Dylan’s gaze. Dylan still had his stupid suit on, minus the jacket he’d shucked the second they’d gotten into the room.

 

Connor’s eyes were serious. He was such a serious person, intense eighty percent of the time. “Were you jealous?” he asked, close enough that Dylan could almost taste his words.

 

They hit him like a freight train. Dylan looked away. There was no way he could deny it, no way he could admit to it.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice strangled.

 

“For what?”

 

“For being...jealous.” This close to Connor, there was nothing he could hide.

 

“Dylan,” Connor breathed. “Look at me.”

 

Dylan forced himself to look back at Connor. He had a little shy half-smile on his face. “Why are you jealous of Mark Scheifele?” It was almost a tease, the way Connor was trying to coax Dylan’s feelings out of him. Like he was happy to be doing this to him. Dylan felt like he might die.

 

“I don’t want to get fired because I’m into you,” Dylan said. He had about six thousand emotions in that moment, and that barely even began to distill his feelings down to something meaningful. But at least he got close.

 

“You’re into me?” He watched Connor’s little smile grow on his face.

 

“Jeez, Con, half the shit I do for you is very outside of my job description and I only do it because…”

 

“Because you like me?”

 

Dylan took a deep breath. Connor’s eyes on him were imploring. Like he was looking for an answer he was pretty sure was there. Dylan nodded. When he spoke, his voice came out in a whisper. “Yeah.”

 

“Really?” Connor asked, his hands gripping Dylan’s waist imperceptibly tighter.

 

“It’s not a big deal, I’m sorry, I can still do my job.” He tried to disentangle himself from Connor, but Connor stayed put, gently pressed Dylan the one step back that he needed before he hit the wall, effectively trapped.

 

“I want to kiss you,” Connor said instead of addressing Dylan’s job.

 

“Oh,” Dylan said. His heart was racing. His hands were still just hanging at his sides, his brain not online enough to figure out what to do with them. So he brought them up to cup Connor’s cheeks, ran his thumbs over the recently-trimmed beard. “You do?” Dylan asked.

 

And then Connor pressed up to kiss him, gentle and sweet and everything Dylan had fantasized about for months of living and working with Connor around the clock. His lips were soft and his mouth was hot. And when Connor pulled away, Dylan tried to chase it. Connor didn’t let him.

 

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to accomplish that for months,” Connor said, letting out a shaky breath, relieved.

 

Dylan didn’t know what to say. He just pulled Connor back into a kiss. Connor’s hands slid up Dylan’s chest, started working on the buttons to Dylan’s shirt.

 

He let Connor undress him down to his underwear, and then Connor pulled him by the hand to the bed, crawling on it and laying down on his back, pulling Dylan on top of him.

 

For all the time the had spent in bed together, this felt novel. Connor’s hands found Dylan’s ass, lined their hips up together. Dylan propped himself up on his forearms, Connor’s softly smiling face right below his. Dylan just took him in. The bare skin that seemed to be everywhere was soft and pale and stretched taught across his body. Dylan had been trying (and mostly failing) to press the thoughts he’d been having about how beautiful Connor was out of his mind. Now, he let them flood him.

 

He dipped his lips down to press kisses to Connor’s neck, to his collarbones, his surgery scar. Connor kept letting out soft little gasps, his hands on Dylan’s ass clenching when Dylan bit into the skin at the join of his neck and shoulder. It wasn’t hard enough to leave a mark, but it was enough for Connor to let out a shaky breath. Dylan could feel him getting hard from how close they were pressed together. He was on his way there too.

 

“I can’t stop thinking about that night we got off together, shit, Dylan,” Connor said. Dylan pulled back to look at Connor’s face, and he looked fathomless, almost lost, gone from just a few kisses and a nip.

 

“I thought for sure that was the end of my job, but fuck, I was just so turned on. Waking up to you grinding into me, are you kidding?”

 

“How many fucking times did I wake up hard after sleeping next to you?” Connor asked. “I’m surprised it took so long for that to happen.”

 

Connor’s hands left his ass, and Dylan was disappointed until he felt them on his jaw. Connor pulled him back down for another kiss.

 

It didn’t feel frantic or urgent. Dylan let Connor have control, let him press his hips up into Dylan’s for some friction, let him keep the kiss slow and languid. It was late, and Dylan wasn’t sure if he’d ever been this tired, but he was content to just keep kissing Connor for as long as he wanted. Forever, ideally. He’d been thinking about Connor’s mouth for what felt like a thousand years. Finally getting his lips on it wasn’t something to be rushed or hurried.

 

Dylan hadn’t made out like this in years, maybe since high school. It felt like their erections weren’t the concern at all here. It felt like kissing was the real objective and not just the means to an end. Since the first time he’d started having orgasms with people and not just making out, it felt like kissing was always just the thing you did in the minutes before coming. Now, an orgasm felt like it was at the bottom of the priority list.

 

Connor’s arms came up around Dylan’s neck, and he shivered at the contact, relaxing enough finally for his body to rest on Connor’s. He was still trying to come to terms with the fact that this was happening. That Connor wanted this too.

 

“You’re a good kisser,” Connor said, pulling back just enough to catch his breath. Fuck, he was so beautiful. The blush on his cheeks, his lips so pink from kissing. Dylan pressed in for a little peck, struggling with the distance between their lips already.

 

“You’re kinda blowing my mind here, too,” Dylan told him. He was out of breath but so was Connor. He let a hand smooth down Connor’s chest, then trailed his fingertips back up, brushing over a nipple. He felt Connor shiver and it was an electric shock to his own body.

 

“Just touch me, please,” Connor said, his voice slightly more strangled than the moment before.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Please,” Connor said, just this side of begging, and Dylan felt his dick jump. Jesus, he had never wanted someone as badly as he wanted Connor.

 

He trailed his fingers back down Connor’s chest, stopping at the waistband of his boxers. He paused for a split second, but long enough for Connor to whine, soft in the back of his throat. Dylan’s chest felt on fire for this boy. It still didn’t even seem real.

 

He slipped his hand into Connor’s boxers to get a grip on him, and Connor’s hips bucked. He gave him a few firm strokes before pulling his hand away.

 

“What the fuck?” Connor asked, like he couldn’t believe what was happening. “C’mon.”

 

Dylan shook his head. Unbelievable. “You’re so needy,” he said, huge smile plastered on his face. He pulled away enough to wrestle Connor’s underwear off of him, tossing it off the bed. And there he was, Dylan's boy in all his glory, dick hard and flushed, resting against his belly. He must have spent a moment too long admiring because Connor’s hand came down to get a grip on himself.

 

“Take yours off too,” he said, and Dylan slipped his own boxer briefs off, trying not to think about how this was the first time Connor had seen him like this. Connor was just looking at him like he was hungry. “C’mere, c’mere.”

 

Dylan scrambled to get back on top of Connor, and Connor wasted no time getting them both in his grip, his big hand holding their dicks tight together. They were leaking precome, and while in an ideal world, Dylan would have preferred a little drizzle of lube, the friction felt good too. Plus, he knew it wouldn’t last long.

 

He leaned back down to kiss Connor as Connor jerked them both off, their kisses devolving into panting and moaning into each others’ mouths. It was sexy, to be this close to Connor, to feel a little wild and on edge. When he was this worked up, he felt like he was in the bad habit of making poor choices in the name of an orgasm, but he couldn’t imagine a world where this was a bad decision.

 

“Fuck, you’re so fucking sexy,” Dylan said, his eyes on Connor’s parted lips. Connor just let out a strangled moan.

 

“I’m close,” Connor whispered, and Dylan could feel himself getting there too. He focused on the feeling of Connor’s callused hand on his dick, on the pink lips he was imagining rubbing the head of his dick on, tracing the shape of them.

 

And then he was coming, his hips stuttering in Connor’s grip, the difference in friction sending Connor over the edge too.

 

It was a thousand times more satisfying than their middle of the night rub-off. It felt much more like a shared orgasm. Something Connor wanted Dylan specifically for, and not just because he was the warm body in his bed that night.

 

Connor went boneless against the pillow, eyes sliding shut. Dylan wanted to collapse on top of him, but he pulled back, caught a glimpse of how much come Connor had spattered across his stomach.

 

“Fuck,” he whispered, tracing a finger through the mess. That was both of them, and it was...kind of everywhere.

 

Connor let out a wrecked, shaky laugh. “That’s...that’s sexy right? Or is it just disgusting?”

 

“It’s really hot,” Dylan confirmed. “But I should probably clean you up.”

 

He ignored the hands Connor shot out to try to grab him as he headed into the bathroom for a damp towel. He cleaned himself up, then came back out to the bed to wipe Connor down.

 

Connor just wanted to be touched, all the time. He was a cuddler, and he preened as Dylan cleaned him up.

 

“Okay, cut that shit out and come here,” Connor said finally. Dylan thought he could probably have been more thorough, but the idea of leaving a little of their combined come on his stomach was also kind of hot. He slid up the bed to lay down next to Connor, pulling the rumpled blankets over them.

 

He’d slept next to Connor a thousand times before, but tonight felt so different that he didn’t even think it could be called the same thing. He gathered Connor into his arms, let his hands explore the soft skin of his back, got a handful of Connor’s ass. Fuck, Dylan loved hockey ass. Hockey ass is how Dylan knew God was real.

 

Dylan pressed kisses to the side of Connor’s face. Now, tangled in bed post-orgasm, Dylan was feeling the full brunt of the weekend, how fucking exhausted he was. But he could hardly focus on anything other than Connor in bed with him, tangled together,  He just let himself feel grateful. Let himself fall asleep.

\---

  


Dylan had never been happier to be in Edmonton in his life.

 

They got back home on Monday, and Connor didn’t have to leave for Philly until Saturday morning. Bye-week was a blessing, and while Connor had made some noises about going somewhere tropical during the beginning of the season, Dylan was a little glad to have this time at home, no traveling, no media. He had been granted the week off as well, though he made it sound like he still had a lot to do in Edmonton when his parents asked what he was up to.

 

He missed his family, but he’d just seen them at Christmas.

 

And he had something new to explore in Edmonton anyway. The blooming of something beautiful and real.

 

If Dylan had thought Connor had been touchy-feely before the All-Star Weekend, it was nothing compared to how he was now. Dylan wasn’t sure if it was because he had the chance to have his mind off of hockey for a little while, or if it was because Connor had been seriously holding back, but Dylan suddenly found himself practically attached to Connor.

 

Connor, wrapping his arms around Dylan’s waist from behind as Dylan tried to do the dishes. Connor, climbing into his lap as he sat on the couch. Connor, stepping into the shower after him so he could soap them both up. They were in their early twenties and insatiable. Dylan was almost surprised to find that Connor was as constantly horny as he was, never more than five seconds away from getting hard.

 

Dylan wasn’t sure if it was the bye week, or the orgasms, or what, but Dylan was spending a fair amount of time in Connor’s bed, and since the first night of All-Star, he hadn’t had a single nightmare.

 

Looking back, Dylan had made Connor come before going to sleep every night that week. That had to be significant, right? That had to be more than a coincidence.

 

Dylan pulled up a new spreadsheet on his phone and started labeling columns. Date, orgasm?, nightmare? He filled out that week, a yes next to every day for orgasm, a no for every day under nightmare. It was probably worth it to figure out if that was helping, not that anything on planet earth would make him stop wanting to make Connor come. It was enough reward just to see his soft, relaxed body, how easy his smile looked after.

 

Still, no nightmares was a fucking bonus.

 

And when Connor had to leave for a quick two-game road trip, Dylan felt like he was being ripped away from him. He almost made Connor late, pressing him against the door to the garage and sinking to his knees, giving Connor something to remember him by. Dylan couldn’t remember ever being this into someone, this consumed by the thought of Connor’s body, his hands, his lips, his smile, his laugh, the easy way he teased Dylan, chased any verbal barbs with kisses.

 

He’d woken something up in Connor. A lightness, a new layer. And Dylan couldn’t believe they couldn’t just lock the doors on Connor’s house and never come out.

 

\---

 

Dylan was used to calls from the road, comfort calls when Connor couldn’t sleep, or had woken up from a nightmare. Connor’s voice, deep and small, asking Dylan to take care of him from hundreds of miles away.

 

When Dylan answered his phone that night, though, Connor’s voice sounded stronger than normal. They’d lost to the Fliers in OT, but they were still coming away with a point, had still scored four goals.

 

“Hey, babe,” Connor said. There was nothing like hearing the voice of the person you were falling for. Dylan suddenly missed him sixty times more than he had been just the moment before.

 

“Hey. What are you up to?” Dylan was in bed watching TV idly, kind of waiting for Connor’s call, even though they hadn’t talked about it.

 

“Thinking about your body. What are you up to?” _That little shit_ , Dylan thought.  He let himself reach a hand down to cup himself through his pajama pants anyway.

 

“Well now that you say that, all I can think about is your mouth.”

 

It devolved from there. Dylan had never had phone sex before, but it was easy with Connor, for some reason. Connor was so shy and bashful until his dick was hard, and then he was bold, chatty, dirty.

 

Dylan stroked himself through Connor saying filthy shit to him, what he wanted Dylan to be doing to him if he was there. Dylan had an easy enough time picturing what Connor was saying to him, scenes painted in Connor’s voice hotter than any porn Dylan had ever watched.

 

He came to the image of choking on Connor’s dick, which wasn’t something he’d thought he’d wanted until Connor said it. He took heavy deep breaths after he recovered.

 

“Fuck, babe, when you get home, I want to fuck you,” he told Connor. Dylan couldn’t even count how many orgasms they’d traded over the last week, but they hadn’t gone all the way yet. Until being so far away from Connor like this, he had felt perfectly satisfied with Connor holding him down and jerking him off nice and slow for forty-five minutes, until he saw stars when he came.

 

Now, his priority was to feel as close to Connor as humanly possible. All he wanted was to be inside of him.

 

“Jesus,” Connor said in a jerky, stuttery breath. Dylan was pretty sure Connor just came too. “Baby,” he whined through shaky breaths, “why are you so far away?”

 

Dylan huffed a little laugh. “You’re the one who chose a job with all this dumb travel involved. I’m the one who stayed in one place, here. I’m the one in my own bed.”

 

“You’re in your bed?” Connor asked, his voice a little weird.

 

“Yeah,” Dylan said.

 

“You’re not in my bed?” Dylan could hear the pout on his voice. He laughed.

 

“Why would I be in your bed if you’re not home?”

 

“I dunno,” Connor said, almost petulant. “I was just picturing you laying in my bed, naked, jerking yourself off.”

 

“Well I was doing that in my bed, so your sheets are still clean.”

 

“That sounds like it’s part of the problem.”

 

“Come home soon and I’ll get back in your bed, how ‘bout that?” Dylan said. It felt like a fair deal to him, honestly.

 

“Two more sleeps,” Connor said.

 

“Two more,” Dylan agreed. “Get some sleep, baby. Call me if you have a nightmare.”

 

“Okay.” Connor’s voice was small again, so different from the Connor who was chasing mutual orgasm. Dylan thought it was so fucking cute.

 

They said goodnight and Dylan could have sworn they almost got into a _no-you-hang-up-first_ spat. It was ridiculous. Dylan was high on it.

 

\---

 

Connor was back late Sunday night after dropping their game against the Habs in OT. And by late, Dylan meant early. He was dead to the world asleep, had been asleep before Connor’s plane had even taken off. He didn’t know why they hadn’t stayed over in Montreal, but that shit never made sense to Dylan.

 

He was in his own room. He didn’t like being in Connor’s room alone. It felt ten times lonelier being in Connor’s bed alone than in his own bed. He was supposed to be alone in his own bed. He was only ever in Connor’s bed when Connor wanted company.

 

Dylan woke to Connor opening and closing the doors of his suite, the sound of Connor’s road trip bag hitting the ground.

 

“You’re home,” Dylan observed, sleepily. It was past four when he looked at his alarm clock. The next day was a day off and thank god, because Dylan wasn’t sure how any of those guys would be able to play getting sleep like this.

 

“I’m home,” Connor said. In the darkness of his room, Dylan watched Connor strip, tearing his clothes off like he was being timed. “Fuck I missed you.”

 

Connor climbed into Dylan’s bed, snaking under his sheets. His hands weren’t shy, feeling Dylan’s chest, slipping down to his pajama pants which Connor peeled off immediately. He straddled Dylan’s hips, and Dylan couldn’t help but smile.

 

“Baby, I’m no use right now,” Dylan said. His mind was still foggy.

 

“You promised you’d fuck me,” Connor whined. He pressed his erection into Dylan’s hip, and lord help him, Dylan could feel himself reacting to it, all the blood in his body rushing to his dick.

 

He pulled Connor’s face to his own, careful in the dark, and kissed him. Connor had no chill, nipping and biting at his lips, almost annoying in how hungry he was.

 

“It’s four in the morning. I’m not fucking you for the first time at four in the morning.”

 

“It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”

 

“Clearly,” Dylan said, sliding a hand down to get a grip on Connor’s erection. Connor had woken him up countless times in the middle of the night. It was nice to not be woken up for something other than a nightmare.

 

And there was nothing like a quick orgasm to get them back to sleep. In the morning, he’d add another nightmare free night to his spreadsheet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See ya next Saturday with part 3!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes on this chapter (and in general? I always struggle with how much to add to things like this). First: tags have been updated. Second: I always feel weird about writing about real girlfriends (Leon's and Darnell's), so like, as a reminder I don’t know shit about any of these boys or their relationships. It’s just easier to use names that already exist, so, I don’t know. Whatever.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to anyone who encouraged me to add more sex, so...you get what you pay for or something.
> 
> Also ten points to whoever can point out the section that made my beta leave a comment that just said “WE GET IT. YOU LOVE HIM.”
> 
> Also also I don't actually know Connor's middle name so I made one up but if anyone does actually know, hit a girl up.

February was a fucking slog. On a Tuesday night after a particularly grueling practice, Darnell invited a few people over for dinner and bitching. Connor insisted Dylan come.

 

“Nursey and Drai’s girlfriends will be there,” Connor said when Dylan complained about going.

 

“Am I your girlfriend now?” Dylan asked. They were standing in front of Dylan’s closet as he hemmed and hawed over what to wear.

 

“You know what I fucking mean,” Connor said. He wrapped his arms around Dylan’s waist from behind and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. When he spoke, it was a mumble directly into the cotton of Dylan’s shirt. “Maybe my boyfriend.”

 

Dylan smiled, rested a hand on Connor’s where they were clasped around his waist. “Sure,” he said.

 

“You don’t have to sound too excited or anything,” Connor said, pouting.

 

Dylan rolled his eyes, turned in Connor’s arms to face him. “Figured that’s what we were already.”

 

That turned Connor’s pout into a little smirk, his smile lifting up only on the right side. Dylan pressed his thumb into the very corner of it, then chased it with a kiss. “You telling your boys?”

 

“They’ve already assumed. It’s ‘couples’ night,’ apparently. Told me to invite you.”

 

“What is _couples’ night_?” Dylan asked.

 

“You’re so suspicious of everything. I dunno, I’ve never been to one, now have I? Sounds like food. Alcohol.” He raised his eyebrows at Dylan. “Board games were mentioned.”

 

“Board games?” It was Dylan’s turn to give Connor some eyebrow.

 

“So suspicious, jesus.”

 

“Just nervous,” Dylan said.

 

“They already like you. Everyone is a big fan of yours, I promise.”

 

“Why?”

 

“The third fricking degree over here. Because you’re good to me. You make me happy. I know you weren’t around before you were around, and I’m sure you would beg to differ, but even though this season has been tough, you’ve made sure I had moments of happiness the whole time. No one has ever done that for me before. You make me fucking smile, Strome, are you happy?”

 

Dylan sighed. He felt like a dick. He was being hard on Connor because he was worried about being introduced as the boyfriend, even if he already knew Connor’s best friends. “I’m sorry. You’re right. We’ll go and I’ll have a good time.”

 

“Thank you,” Connor said, letting his eyes drift shut as he tipped his head up to ask for a kiss. It was Dylan’s favorite thing in the whole world, Connor’s face happy and relaxed, waiting for a kiss he knew would come. He gave himself a moment to really take it all in, Connor wrapped around him, lips tipped up toward Dylan like a flower to sunlight.

 

Then he dipped down to press a kiss right where Connor was expecting it, getting a content sigh from Connor in return.

 

\---

 

Darnell and his girl were making a mess of the kitchen, and the rest of them were just standing around watching.

 

“Maybe if you poison it we could all get out of playing tomorrow,” Leon suggested. “You know, make it look like food poisoning?”

 

“We’ll fuckin’ lose anyway,” Darnell shrugged. “I don’t even know how to food poison myself. Dylan, wanna google that in Incognito?”

 

“I’m going to pretend I’m not hearing this,” Dylan said, rolling his eyes.

 

“What, are you a cop now?” Leon asked. He was smiling though. It wasn’t any kind of real accusation.

 

“He’s just sick of listening to me complain,” Connor said. Connor had a beer in one hand, the other twined in Dylan’s as they stood around the kitchen island. Darnell was making some kind of chicken dish in a huge pan on top of the stove, and there was something in the oven too. Dylan wasn’t too clear on what they were about to eat, but he was sick of policing Connor’s food. That part of the season was fucking over.

 

“That is correct. Never met such a fucking gold-medalist in complaining,” Dylan said. He stepped a little closer to Connor, feeling a little bold. Leon had his girlfriend tucked against his side, and Darnell and his girl kept kissing as they passed each other in the kitchen. Dylan knew their PDA would be different—both because Dylan was a man, and because Connor was Connor—but Dylan wanted to ease into the water a little.

 

Connor smiled, shifted a bit so that Dylan was more behind him. Then he pulled Dylan close to him by his hand, so Dylan was pressed against Connor’s back. Connor pressed Dylan’s hand to his stomach. Dylan couldn’t help his smile, but he tried to tuck it into Connor’s hair to hide it a bit.

 

“You two are so cute,” Celeste said, looking at them like they were paper dolls. Dylan would take that over disgust. Over Connor’s shoulder, Dylan could tell he was smiling too.

 

“It’s nice to be able to acknowledge this outside of our house,” Connor said. Dylan caught that— _our house._ Every single second of this dinner made him feel warm and just fucking stupid in love. He was still exploring saying those words in his head. But it felt so good every time he did. It was different getting to show people they were together. Dylan hadn’t thought it would feel different, but being seen changed something. Legitimized it.

 

“Everyone’s kinda been assuming for months,” Darnell said, poking the chicken in the pan. It was sizzling in a sauce that smelled both sweet and savory, and it was making Dylan’s stomach rumble.

 

“Who’s everyone?” Connor asked. Dylan could feel him go tense.

 

Leon answered the question. “Chaiser for sure. He’s pretty sure he’s right. Klef. Nuge.”

 

“Can you do me a favor and just...not confirm that?” Connor asked. “Have you already confirmed it?”

 

“No, no one has said anything,” Leon assured him. “A lot of the guys would be cool though. It’s not a big deal.”

 

“I’m not worried about me,” Connor said. He looked over his shoulder at Dylan. “Dyl could get fired.”

 

“Oh, fuck,” Darnell said. “Forgot about that. Yeah, we’ll keep quiet.”

 

“Who cares if I get fired,” Dylan grumbled.

 

“The three of us are not the only ones over our jobs at the moment,” Connor said, addressing his teammates.

 

“How much different is your job than mine,” Mikayla said, shrugging. “You do his laundry and make sure the shit he’s posting on the internet is appropriate? How do I get paid for that?”

 

“Who bought you this house, baby?” Darnell said, and she rolled his eyes at him.

 

“Just saying, you were like, a paid WAG before you were a WAG,” she continued.

 

“I’m not a fucking WAG,” Dylan said, offended.

 

“It’s not an insult,” Celeste said.

 

“Don’t give him heat, he’s got a PR team almost as far up his ass as I do.”

 

“And I don’t even get the free Adidas,” Dylan said.

 

“I’ll buy you sneakers, you want sneakers?”

 

Dylan glared at him. “I can buy my own fucking sneakers.”

 

“Alright lovebirds, food is ready,” Mikayla said, shooting them a _no-lover’s-squabbles-in-my-house_ look.

 

The food was good, and relocating to the dining room gave them a break in their argument. It was no understatement that Connor made more than him, and in their current situation, it didn’t affect much. But Dylan didn’t just want to be Connor’s boyfriend until the end of the season. He loved Connor. They’d have to talk about money sometime.

 

Dylan was not excited.

 

They just sat around the dining room table for a couple more hours, alcohol being passed around. The Oilers played the next day so no one got hammered, but Connor drank more than he normally would. Dylan stuck to his one beer so he could drive, but he didn’t mind tipsy Connor. Tipsy Connor scooted his chair right up against Dylan’s, kept his hand on Dylan’s thigh as he leaned into his side.

 

\---

 

When they got home, they were both in a pretty good mood. Connor was flushed from his three beers, and Dylan thought it was impossibly cute.

 

“Fucking finally home,” Connor said, pressing Dylan into the first wall he could after they got inside. He kissed Dylan, messy and enthusiastic, his arms coming up around Dylan’s neck. Connor was strong, and Connor was determined. When he pulled back from their kiss, Dylan had the full intensity of Connor’s focus on him. His steely eyes under a set brow. Tension in his jaw. He was hungry.

 

“You’re angling for something,” Dylan said, relaxing a little, grabbing Connor’s waist.

 

“Yeah, I bet you have no idea what I want.” He pressed his hips into Dylan, who groaned at the feeling of Connor getting hard in his jeans.

 

“Alright, alright,” Dylan said. “I’ll give you anything you want. Let’s just get upstairs.”

 

“You could fuck me here,” Connor said, nipping Dylan’s jaw.

 

“Logistically complicated.”

 

“Kitchen sex?”

 

“When we put lube down here maybe.”

 

Connor just whined, high in his throat. Connor was demanding and bossy. For someone whose life was heavily controlled from the outside, Connor was remarkably used to getting his way. And it showed. “So needy,” Dylan admonished. He kissed Connor’s cheek, then shoved him away, nudged him toward the stairs. Connor stopped complaining and went.

 

He headed straight to his own room, trusting Dylan to follow after him. There was some kind of power struggle when it came to their rooms, and Connor usually won. His king-sized bed was hard to argue with.

 

Connor was already stripping his clothes off by the time Dylan closed the door behind them. “Antsy?”

 

“Fuck, baby, to just get to be with you tonight, hold your hand like that. You don’t know what that did to me,” Connor said, pulling his shirt over his head. He wasn’t the most eloquent person in the world regularly, and when he was horny he was kind of a mess. But it was sweet. And Dylan had to admit that Connor getting all worked up over being able to be themselves—be together—in front of his friends did it for him too.

 

He unbuttoned the shirt he’d worn to dinner and dropped it to the floor as Connor worked on the button on his own pants. Dylan wanted to close the couple foot gap between them and pick Connor up under his ass in order to drop him on the bed, but Connor was such fucking solid muscle Dylan figured he’d probably humiliate himself trying.

 

Instead, he just herded Connor toward the bed, the two of them stumbling as they tried to get out of their clothes. Connor laughed as he tripped over his pants and fell to the mattress, and Dylan peeled his undershirt off before climbing in bed after him. He helped Connor with his pants, then his socks. And then he just had to pause to look at him, because Connor was so fucking beautiful.

 

Some NHLers had cut, defined abs, but Connor didn’t. Dylan knew he was solid muscle. They worked out together at least three times a week. He knew Connor was strong. It just didn’t show on him like some other guys. He had a softness to his stomach that Dylan wanted to fucking eat up.

 

Connor scootched to the center of the bed, keeping his eyes leveled on Dylan. “Why do you still have clothes on?” he asked. Then he wiggled out of his own underwear.

 

Dylan had to shake his head a little to clear it. Then he peeled his pants off, took his underwear off. He climbed over Connor until he could feel the heat of Connor’s skin on his own, the rough calluses of Connor’s fingertips as they grazed down his shoulders and back.

 

“You’re so beautiful and I want your dick in me so bad.”

 

“That was like, cute and dirty,” Dylan said, smiling at him. Connor just bit his lip. Looked at Dylan like he was dessert. “We’re getting there.”

 

Connor huffed, and Dylan leaned down to kiss him, settling their bodies together so Dylan could take his time, not waste the strength in his arms holding himself above Connor like that. He got a hand behind Connor’s head and pulled him in for a kiss. Dylan was ready to take his time, kiss Connor until his lips were slippery and shiny, until he was trembling with not being touched properly. The hair at the back of Connor’s neck was prickly, regrettably short, and Dylan wished dearly that they’d started doing this before Connor had gotten his haircut.

 

Connor’s big hands dipped down to Dylan’s waist, one sliding to his lower back. Dylan didn’t have verbal confirmation, but Connor was clearly interested in the dip Dylan’s back took right before his ass, his hand always finding that spot. Had he been wearing underwear, Connor would have tucked a couple fingertips down the back, just to be there. Since he was bare, Connor just barely teased the top of Dylan’s crack until he laughed, pulled back from their kiss.

 

Connor looked smug. Smug was a good look on him. It usually meant he was doing something to make Dylan feel good, and he could tell it was working. It was getting a little Pavlovian. Dylan’s dick jumped when he saw that look, and he gasped as he pressed it into Connor’s thigh, chasing that feeling.

 

Connor took his opportunity and tucked his face up into Dylan’s neck, sucking at his pulse point. It was almost gentle, like Connor was worshiping the spot instead of claiming it in his name. Dylan liked that.

 

He was a little dizzy with how nice the kisses on his neck felt, so he didn’t see it coming when Connor flipped them over, pushed Dylan’s arms above his head. Connor hovered there, their faces inches apart. “You said you’d give me whatever I wanted,” he recalled.

 

“Yeah, baby. Absolutely anything.” Dylan had never in his whole life trusted someone the way he trusted Connor. Maybe that was foolish, to trust someone like Connor McDaivd that much. But it felt incredible to give that to someone. It felt bigger than love some days.

 

Connor pushed himself back up and reached over to the side table drawer for lube. He pressed the tube into Dylan’s hand. “Please,” was all he said.

 

“Jeez, what did you even do before me?” Dylan joked, squeezing some lube out onto his fingers. Connor loved having something in his ass. It was almost ridiculous.

 

Connor raised an eyebrow at him. It changed his sex-dumb face into something that approximated what he looked like when a beat reporter asked him a dumb question. “Dildo,” he said shrugging.

 

Dylan had to use his un-lubed hand to reach between them and grab the base of his dick. The thought of Connor—fuck, he couldn’t even think about it without blowing his load too soon. “We’re going to have to talk about that later,” was all he could get out.

 

Connor leaned over him again, arms braced on either side of Dylan’s head. His hair fell over his forehead a little, face red like after a game. He was sex-dumb again, a combination of intense eyes and hanging-open mouth, and Dylan let go of his own dick to pat Connor’s hip.

 

“I’d ask you if you were ready—”

 

“But it would be a stupid fucking question,” Connor finished.

 

Dylan reached between Connor’s legs and trailed his fingers up, past his balls to his hole. He used the tips of two fingers to gently distribute some lube, giving Connor the lightest, softest circles. Connor groaned at the light touches already. It was so satisfying to fuck someone who was so enthusiastic, so constantly. Dylan pressed a kiss to Connor’s fuzzy cheek, then another and another. He kept his fingers circling.

 

Connor took a breath, and when he exhaled he shifted his hips back, just enough to let Dylan know he was ready for more. Slowly, he dipped a fingertip in, Connor already feeling smooth and perfect.

 

For as whiny as Connor could be about wanting to be fingered, once Dylan started, he wasn’t in a rush. Dylan took his time and played with him, teased him open. Connor tried kissing him, but it was like his lips couldn’t coordinate themselves for more than sharing breath, and he gave up, dropping his head to Dylan’s shoulder.

 

Connor’s hips were working in time with Dylan’s thrusts, these small little movements that were devastatingly sexy. If he looked over Connor’s shoulder and down his back, Dylan could see the way Connor’s ass was moving. He couldn’t look for longer than a second or two at a time if he had any hope for his participation in their evening.

 

He squeezed Connor’s ass with his free hand, let it trail up Connor’s side, then back down. He had the smoothest, softest skin. Dylan could feel how into what they were doing Connor was from how hot his skin was. Connor started working his hips back in earnest, fucking back on Dylan’s fingers, little gasps falling from his mouth.

 

Connor tried kissing him again, sloppy pecks between his gasps, and Dylan could tell he was ready before he said anything. Still, he waited until Connor’s hips stilled and he shifted forward to let Dylan take his fingers back.

 

“Mmm god that feels so good when you do it,” Connor said, dipping down to land a more focused kiss on Dylan’s lips, soft and slow.

 

“Better than the dildo?” Dylan teased.

 

“Do you want the honest answer?” Connor challenged back.

 

“Guess not,” Dylan huffed.

 

Connor just rolled his eyes at him, reached for a condom in the still-open side-table drawer. He ripped it open and let Dylan pluck it from the foil.

 

In order to get the condom on, he had to reach through Connor’s legs and focus, and he was having a hard time focusing on anything except exactly what was between Connor’s legs. He had such a nice dick. Dylan wasn’t going to trade what he was about to do to get his mouth on it, but he could practically taste it just looking at it. When he got his condom on, he gave Connor a friendly little stroke, swiping his thumb over the head to collect a drop of precome. He stuck his thumb in his mouth and sucked it clean, narrowing his eyes at Connor.

 

“You’re killing me,” Connor said. He shifted his weight until he was just on his knees and reached back to get a grip on Dylan. Connor’s hands. His brain almost shorted out thinking about them. Big and strong. Connor was hardly good at everything—Dylan had watched him try to cook eggs—but he was good at hockey and he was good at sex, and his hands were a big reason for both successes.

 

He lined himself up and slipped Dylan in, letting out a long breath as he slowly got comfortable. Millimeter by millimeter he sank down on Dylan’s dick.

 

Dylan was pretty sure, if you had been around Connor in any way, if you had met him or had him sign your jersey. If you’d watched him on the ice, or watched him give an awkward interview with a television personality who clearly made him uncomfortable, you could see that even through everything, he glowed. He glowed like sunshine off twenty-four karat gold. He glowed radioactive in the night. He was just fucking luminous.

 

Or, Dylan thought, it was possible he was just overwhelmingly and stupidly in love.

 

Dylan loved Connor, and Dylan loved hockey ass, and Dylan loved hockey thighs. Connor’s thighs were doing all the work, lifting him up and dropping him back down, further and further each time. He had his head tipped back, the long line of his throat and chest on display for Dylan, all the way down to his erection. Dylan wrapped a hand around him so he could give him slow strokes, not too much too soon.

 

When Connor was nice and warmed up, and curled back down, hands on Dylan’s chest. He was getting a good rhythm going, and Dylan couldn’t speak. It felt too good. Dylan had been getting used to orgasms several times daily, and he hadn’t come yet that day.

 

“Baby, this is gonna be embarrassing,” Dylan said, hands coming up to cradle Connor’s face. He was sweaty and flushed and beautiful. Dylan wanted to lick the border of Connor’s bottom lip, so he did. Connor kept fucking himself on Dylan’s dick, speeding up.

 

“Dylan,” Connor groaned. “Just fuck me then,” he said, and Dylan didn’t need to be asked twice. He got a good grip on Connor’s hips and rolled them, so he was between Connor’s spread legs. Connor’s hands gripped his shoulders, and Dylan didn’t have to formulate a plan. This felt animal, natural. His hips worked fast and hard without his brain thinking much about it, giving it to Connor as he chased his orgasm, hips stuttering as he came.

 

He pressed his face to Connor’s chest. “Fuck, baby,” he said. Connor’s hand came up to tangle in the back of his hair. He’d been so worried about Connor’s hair for so long that he’d been neglecting his own, letting it get curly. He couldn’t decide what to do about it.

 

He did have a pretty good idea what he would do when he pulled out, though. He got rid of his condom in a handful of tissues and slid further down between Connor’s legs. He slipped a couple fingers back into him. Connor gasped, and when Dylan got his mouth on Connor’s dick, he stopped breathing.

 

Dylan had just stuck as much of Connor’s dick as he could in his mouth, just to get a taste of it, but he pulled off, used his free hand to steady it in place before licking it wet. His lips were already soft from kissing and he licked them too, using them to tease the head, giving it flicking little licks.

 

“Baby,” Connor wined. “That’s so fucking sexy, but I don’t need to be teased or worked up right now,” he said, and Dylan got it. He nodded, took Connor as far as he could go.

 

He didn’t have to put a whole lot of work into it. Dylan let Connor work himself between his fingers and his mouth, Connor’s hips thrusting up into wet heat, and then back onto fingers. They were working up to Dylan letting Connor fuck his face in earnest, and this was part of the first baby steps. It was goddamn hot to know Connor was just using him, his fingers, his mouth, to come.

 

It didn’t take much, Dylan’s fingers already well-versed in the art giving Connor orgasms. Connor’s breath started coming faster, his hips twitching with less precision. The hand in Dylan’s hair tightened as Connor came, his orgasm spilling over Dylan’s tongue. Dylan did nothing to contain the mess, let it drip back down Connor’s dick. Connor groaned watching it.

 

“Shit that’s so gross, I hate how into that I am,” Connor laughed, the hand in Dylan’s hair dropping down to Dylan’s lips, tracing through the come that was dripping over his bottom lip. Dylan had discovered how much Connor liked that on accident, and he was happy to indulge it. Anything that made Connor look at him with smoky, heavy eyes like that.

 

They were breathing hard, and Dylan wiped his face on the sheets, rested his head on Connor’s inner thigh. Connor stroked his cheek with his thumb, looked at Dylan like he was Connor’s whole world.

 

Dylan hated how the responsible part of him needed to check what time it was. He knew it was late, but it could be any time before he looked at the clock. Once he looked, he knew they were going to have to make some good choices. He couldn’t help it. He looked. “Ugh, almost midnight.”

 

“Shower before bed,” Connor said. “Rinse off at least.”

 

“Rinse off,” Dylan agreed. Just enough to get rid of the come and lube. They spent four minutes showering, and it was mostly Dylan running his hands over Connor’s ass. They didn’t even get their hair wet.

 

“Sex is gross,” Connor complained as they crawled into Connor’s bed. There was a little bit of a wet spot they left behind, but Connor’s bed was so huge it didn’t matter. Connor just curled against Dylan’s chest. And Dylan was just _so happy._

 

In the morning, Dylan ticked off another nightmare-less night on his spreadsheet.

 

\---

 

“Don’t subject me to this again,” Connor whined. It was just past dinner and Dylan and Connor were already curled up in Connor’s bed, San Jose at Anaheim on the TV. Dylan had his computer open on his lap. The rough cut of the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast Connor had filmed with Leon at the All Star Game was ready to be reviewed.

 

“It’s fine,” Dylan said. “You’ll be fine, I’m sure. They already told me they left out some of the stuff we already discussed.” The preliminary meeting Dylan had with their producer before Connor going on this podcast was signed off on was…Dylan hoped to repress it. It was tense. It was long. It was the most negotiating that Dylan had ever done. His negotiations had gotten them final review rights of the video before they published it for real.

 

Connor sighed heavy and snuggled against Dylan’s shoulder as Dylan hit play.

 

“Fuck, have them cut anything where you can see the buttons on my shirt gaping,” Connor said immediately.

 

“That’s the whole intro, babe, I think we’re stuck with that,” Dylan said. Dylan wasn’t sure if Connor’s reaction to the video was more because he just didn’t like non-hockey attention on him, or if it was because of the content of this interview specifically. Biz always tried to push his luck, and Connor was just not a big fan of invasive interview questions.

 

“Okay, we’re cutting this part,” Dylan said, as Connor gave the most awkward answer ever to why he didn’t have a girlfriend.

 

“Yeah, that’s painful,” Connor agreed.

 

“And every time you take a sip of your beer. Why did you take a beer?”

 

“I needed that beer,” Connor laughed.

 

“You had Leon there,” Dylan said. “I was there too.”

 

“Yeah, and so were cameras.” Every day Dylan found a new place in Connor’s life where he was confident, and a new place he was shy. He was fine with cameras when it came to hockey shoots. Less fine with them in informal situations.

 

“Alright, well I’m making a list of cuts before final approval alright? You want me to mention your shirt?”

 

Connor sighed. “No.”

 

“It’s going to be okay. You look like you’re having a good time. It’ll be alright.”

 

“I guess,” Connor said, reaching over to close Dylan’s laptop for the night. It didn’t mean there would be shenanigans. Hockey was on. And so Connor would be watching hockey. Dylan just slid his computer onto the side table and arranged Connor so he could put his head in Connor’s lap, directing Connor’s hand to his hair. If Connor was going to watch hockey with hawk-like focus, he could at least play with Dylan’s hair a bit.

 

\---

 

The West Edmonton Mall wasn’t somewhere Dylan ever _wanted_ to go to. Dylan was largely an online shopper, but he’d had to go before, when Connor was on a roadtrip to run some errands. It’s overwhelming on a normal day.

 

There was a massive signing that day, and Connor was actually going to be in attendance. There were bodyguards and coordinators with walkies, since the boys were distributed across the mall. Connor’s spot was mobbed, and Dylan stood behind his table, listened to the quiet voice Connor used to talk to his fans.

 

Dylan watched people cry, watched kids scream, watched grown men tell Connor that they’d named their children after him. Before they'd met, Dylan had thought that the modesty Connor projected that everyone talked about was contrived, but now it was easy to see how genuine that modesty was.

 

Connor signed about a million little photos of himself, breaking the rules and signing jerseys for a couple of the kids. Dylan couldn’t help but love him when he watched shit like that, how a soft smile would spread across Connor’s face.

 

There was a reason Connor didn’t do this very often though. It drained him. Dylan could watch his shoulders sag as the afternoon went on.

 

When it was time to leave, they headed into the bowels of the mall, escorted by mall security and Oilers security. On days like these, Connor seemed like the prince of Edmonton, like Dylan had thought before he’d met Connor.

 

The green room was down an industrial hallway. Connor ditched his jersey, collected his things, and doused his hands in Purell again, like he’d been doing all afternoon. Then they headed out to leave.

 

They had to take an elevator up a few flights that would dump them out in the parking garage, and it was taking forever to arrive. Dylan watched as Connor gave a cursory glance around them before sinking against Dylan.

 

“This isn’t really the kind of thing I like to spend energy on,” Connor grumbled.

 

“I know, baby,” Dylan said. He felt Connor twine their hands together, giving him a squeeze. Dylan was nervous, holding hands in public like this. But it was basically empty down there, and it just seemed like Connor really needed to hold his hand.

 

They got in the elevator when it finally arrived, and when the doors shut, Dylan wrapped an arm around Connor, kissed him on the temple. He whispered about the smoothie he was going to make Connor when they got home, with all the gross healthy shit Connor loved.

 

\--- 

 

The media kept addressing Connor’s ‘history with the flu’ as though he was just going to croak one day when he’s twenty-five.

 

The truth is that any time Connor gets sick they call it the flu because it sounds serious enough to let him have the night off. That night, Dylan wasn’t sure what was going on, but he did know that Connor was camped out in Dylan’s bed, a bucket beside him on the floor. The collar of his white t-shirt was stretched out and sweaty, his skin so pale he was almost see-through. All Dylan wanted to do was hold him, but Connor was burning up and would barely tolerate the scalp massage Dylan was giving him.

 

Dylan was sitting next to where Connor was sprawled, his laptop on his lap, trying to get some work done. They were in Dylan’s room because it was more contained. Closer to a bathroom and a kitchen (or kitchenette, really) at the same time than Connor’s. Plus, Connor had said it smelled like Dylan, which was comforting.

 

Dylan thought it was at least in part because Connor didn’t want to accidentally throw up on his own sheets, but he wasn’t going to call out a sick man.

 

“I can’t believe they expect you to get on a plane tomorrow,” Dylan said. Connor was resting but not asleep. He couldn’t focus enough to watch TV, it hurt his head to look at his phone. He was bored, sick, and pathetic, and Dylan just felt so fucking bad for him.

 

“I can’t believe they didn’t make me play through this,” he said. Connor had actually shown up at the rink, dressed for the game, and then thrown up in front of a trainer in the locker room before they excused him from the game. Dylan had to come pick him up. Connor’s car was still at Rogers.

 

Dylan had his room stocked. He’d brought up all the Gatorade from the kitchen and crammed his little fridge with it. He had ice packs Connor was cycling through, resting them on his forehead until he couldn’t stand it anymore. He was cuddling one, wrapped in a towel, pressing his face against it every few moments.

 

Not for the first time, Dylan wondered how much of himself Connor would give to hockey and if he’d just let the NHL keep taking and taking until there was nothing left.

 

\----

 

Connor was on a plane to Texas when Dylan realized that he had whatever Connor had. It wasn’t exactly the parting gift he had wanted to receive. He was grateful for the Gatorade and ice packs he’d hoarded in his suite, the little drinkable containers of broth that he could microwave just to throw back up in an hour.

 

Dylan had three days without anyone to rub his back when he puked, or play with his hair, or sing stupid pop songs to him just to make him laugh. Just three days of falling asleep on Skype, which had become their habit when they were apart.

 

And Dylan blamed the Edmonton Oilers for that.

 

And days later when Connor finally came home Dylan was feeling better. But Connor still babied him a little, pulled the sheets off of Dylan’s bed to throw them in the wash for him, scratched his back, blew him within an inch of his life.

 

It still would have been nice to have had Connor there when he actually needed him though.

 

\---

 

“He looks tired, is what I’m saying,” Bryan McDavid said, over a conference call one afternoon. It was Dylan’s birthday, and while Connor had woken him up with a blowjob, he’d had to go to morning skate right after. He had a game that night. Dylan had to work anyway. Connor had promised to take him out to dinner the next night.

 

“He looks tired because he is tired,” Dylan said. They were coming off a three-game win streak, and Connor was happy. But he’d also worked hard in those games, which didn’t leave much leftover.

 

“It’s a priority to make sure he looks like he’s handling the year well,” Richard said. Dylan would be so, so happy to be done with this season, with this job. With how his situation with Connor was going (the situation being that Dylan was in love with him) he wasn’t sure if he still wanted to work for the Leafs after this. He wasn’t sure if he’d be legally allowed to work for the Oilers instead if anyone knew they were together.

 

Dylan wasn’t sure what his future held, but he didn’t want to be Connor’s babysitter anymore, that was for sure. He didn’t want to be on conference calls like this one anymore.

 

“What if we got him some concealer?” Cindy said. Dylan was glad this wasn’t a video call because he didn’t think he could control his heavy eye roll any longer.

 

“If anyone knew Connor McDavid wore concealer in his everyday life, he would never live it down. He could win ten Stanley Cups and people would still say ‘remember that time he wore concealer?’” Dylan pointed out.

 

“Yeah, we don’t want people thinking he’s gay, think about how awful that would be,” Bryan said. Dylan froze. It would have been one thing for anyone else on that call to say it, but hearing Connor’s dad say it—hearing _his boyfriend’s dad_ say it—cut. Not that he was surprised Bryan was homophobic.

 

“Yeah, that is a good point. Maybe some of those stick on eye masks that he could do before bed,” Cindy said. “I’ll send you the Amazon link to the ones I use, Dylan.”

 

“Uh, thanks, yeah I’ll order some for him,” he said. He didn’t really know what she was talking about, but he’d look into it later. He was still reeling.

 

“And you have to make sure he does them too,” Richard said.

 

“Yeah, I’ll make sure,” Dylan promised.

 

The rest of the call was about how well Connor had been playing lately, and the analytics for the recent CCM post on Connor’s Instagram. Connor’s Instagram was more boring to Dylan than any spreadsheet tracking Connor’s workouts and measurements because it was so obviously run by not-Connor. Connor liked not thinking about it but hated the actual content on it.

 

(“Yeah, I obviously spend my downtime posting about hockey skates to Instagram. Hockey skates are my passion,” Connor said dryly when he saw the most recent post Dylan made.

 

“Hockey skates are your passion,” Dylan pointed out.

 

“I really love the one-piece boot, but who fucking posts that to Instagram?”

 

“Someone sponsored by them, Connor Edward.”)

 

It was a mercy when they hung up the call and Dylan went downstairs to the kitchen to chop up veggies for the ‘healthy snack’ section of Connor’s fridge. It was the weekly task he liked better than laundry but worse than putting in the grocery order. Dylan was so spoiled by grocery delivery. He never wanted to enter a grocery store again.

 

He had music playing from his laptop as he chopped, and he heard the garage door open and shut, the door to the mudroom creak open, letting a gust of cold air in.

 

“Hey, babe,” Connor called over the music. It wasn’t loud, but Connor turned it down anyway as he entered the kitchen, hair wet from his post-skate practice, winter coat over his sweats. Dylan was obsessed with how good Connor looked in a suit, but he loved Connor the most like this: casual clothes, messy hair, sneakers. He always had the newest Adidas, and even though Dylan had told him not to, he’d gotten Adidas to send Dylan a couple pairs too, so they had matching fucking shoes.

 

Dylan would never admit it out loud, but it was cute, alright?

 

“Thanks for doing veggies,” Connor said, taking a carrot stick out of Dylan’s pile to chomp on. He snuggled up behind Dylan and wrapped his arms around Dylan’s waist. “Happy birthday,” he said into Dylan’s ear, kissing the skin behind it.

 

“For my birthday my boss got me a discussion about how he wants you to wear concealer so you look healthier,” Dylan said, rolling his eyes.

 

“What the fuck?” Connor complained. “I’m not wearing makeup.”

 

“I told them that. I said it would be hell if anyone found out, and someone is bound to. So we compromised on eye masks.”

 

“I don’t even know what that is.”

 

“I had to research it. I think my Amazon page is still up, you can look at what they are because I’m officially in charge of making you wear those.”

 

“Each day is a new hell,” Connor said, dryly. Dylan could hear him clicking around on his laptop on the kitchen island behind him.

 

“What the fuck is this?” Connor asked, his tone shifting.

 

“It’s just like, this sticky thing that calms down bags under your eyes—” Dylan started.

 

“No, fucking whatever, this, this spreadsheet,” Connor said. “Nightmares...Orgasms…”

 

Dylan’s blood ran cold. Fuck. He’d forgotten his nightmare tracker was up still. He’d updated it before he’d gotten chopping because he’d been preoccupied that morning.

 

“Just wanted to see if it affected your sleep. Made it better,” Dylan said, turning around, timid. It was a dumb thing to track and maybe he should have used codewords or just initials in his columns.

 

“You’re fucking tracking my nightmares after you give me an orgasm? Is this part of the fucking weekly report? Are you sending this to my fucking dad?” Connor said, the betrayal clear on his face. He wasn’t yelling, but his voice was stern, strained, hurt.

 

“Baby, no I wouldn’t—”

 

“Clearly you fucking would, Dylan. Shit, is that why you’re fucking doing this? Because one time we accidentally rubbed off against each other at night and you noticed I didn’t wake you up screaming finally? And it was decided that you should keep doing that so I’d be at peak hockey performance or fucking something?”

 

“What, fuck, no, Con—”

 

“Save it,” Connor said, slamming Dylan’s laptop shut and heading back out the way he came, garage door opening and shutting as he drove away. Dylan wasn’t sure what he was going to do without a gameday suit. He’d have to come back, right?

 

Fuck. _FUCK._

 

With his computer closed, the kitchen fell into a heavy, lonely silence. What a great fucking birthday, Dylan thought. He hastily stashed his vegetables in the fridge and put the knife back in the block. He didn’t know what to do with himself. Connor was so mad. Dylan had seen Connor upset a thousand times, but never at him. He’d never had Connor use that disappointed tone with him. Never seen Connor’s face so visibly betrayed.

 

He took his computer and headed upstairs. Usually, he left Connor’s room alone, but Dylan wanted to talk to him when he came home for a suit. He crawled into Connor’s bed to wait.

 

Hours passed. Dylan’s computer died, and he tossed it to the side. He talked to his parents when they called, accepted their birthday wishes, tried to act normal. He went downstairs to heat up some food for dinner. He brought it back up to Connor’s bed, leaving his empty plate on the side table. Finally, he turned the game on.

 

Connor was there. Dylan wasn’t sure how he’d figured out his gameday suit, but he must have. It took a lot to keep Connor away from hockey. Dylan watched him during the anthem. Connor was so good at being even keel in hockey situations, but by this point, Dylan knew Connor’s face. He could see the set of Connor’s jaw. His sadness.

 

Connor played emotionally and not always great, but he got two assists because he’s Connor McDavid and that’s what he does. Dylan left the TV on for the post-game, cuddled deeper into Connor’s sheets. He was determined to stay awake until Connor came home.

 

To keep himself awake, he drafted what felt like the longest text message of his life.

 

_Baby, I truly hope you know I would never, ever do anything to hurt you. I know what you found was shitty, but I just wanted to do anything to help you sleep better. Not for hockey, but because nightmares suck, and because I wanted to help you. I wanted you to be able to sleep. I’m just also a nerd who loves making spreadsheets. I deleted it. I never shared it with anyone. Please come home. I’m so sorry._

 

When he was happy with it, he hit send.

 

The night kept getting later. The post-game ended. Dylan flipped the TV off and started scrolling his phone instead. He didn’t know if Connor had received his text, but he hadn’t responded. Dylan could barely keep his eyes open.

 

It was pitch black when he woke up, the middle of the night, too quiet in Connor’s room, too cold in his bed. Dylan checked his phone. Three in the morning. He was sick of this. He had never liked being in Connor’s bed alone, even if the pillows did smell like him.

 

He grabbed Connor’s favorite pillow and headed back to his room. He’d finish sleeping in his own bed, figure out what to do about Connor in the morning. He had to come home eventually.

 

Dylan cracked the door to his suite and noticed he must have left his bedroom light on. There was a glow under his bedroom door. But when he cracked the door open, he realized it was his lamp. And it was on because Connor was there, asleep in Dylan’s bed, his feet hanging off the end, arms wrapped around a pillow the way he slept on the road when he didn’t have anyone to cuddle. He recognized his own U of T t-shirt stretched across Connor’s broad shoulders.

 

Dylan let out a relieved sigh. Connor was here. He was home. He was safe. And even if Connor was still pissed at him, him being safe was enough for now.

 

He could hear Connor’s even breath as he approached the bed, reaching a hand out to touch Connor’s shoulder. He stroked his hand down Connor’s arm and Connor stirred. He turned over to see who was there, and there was almost the hint of a smile when he saw it was Dylan.

 

“Hey,” Connor said, rubbing his eyes, reaching out for Dylan’s wrist.

 

“Hi,” Dylan said. “I was really worried about you.”

 

“I know. I’m. I’m sorry. Obviously, you wouldn’t fucking send a spreadsheet like that to my dad. But I just didn’t get it. I saw it and I freaked out.”

 

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” Dylan said. “I just wanted you to sleep better.”

 

Connor scooted away from the edge of the bed, pulling at Dylan so he would climb in next to him. Dylan settled into the spot Connor had already warmed up. Connor pulled them flush together immediately, pressing his face into the crook of Dylan’s neck.

 

“I was just scared that this was…” Connor started. Dylan’s arms tightened around him. “That you were only...because your job.”

 

“This is real for me, baby. Your fucking Instagram, your haircut schedule, your approved wardrobe. That’s my job. Your happiness, though, anything we’ve ever done in bed together, your stupid jokes that I laugh at—”

 

“Hey!”

 

“All of that is my pleasure,” Dylan said.

 

“It’s real for me too,” Connor said. He hesitated, looked Dylan in the eye. “But our sex life. That can’t be a spreadsheet. I feel like a fuckin’ science experiment enough as it is. I don’t need that from you too.”

 

In hindsight, it felt obvious that Connor wouldn't want something like that on a spreadsheet. Dylan felt like a fucking idiot. “I get that. I wasn’t thinking about anything other than how awful it must be to get nightmares so often.”

 

Connor shrugged. He was being more generous that Dylan felt he deserved. But Connor knew him. Knew how much Dylan cared. “I mean, I’m not mad about the frequency of our orgasms, which I’m sure you know. But. We should talk about this. Us.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Maybe not in the middle of the night. But it’s March. The season is almost over.”

 

Dylan could hear what he was trying to say. When the season ended, Dylan’s job would end. And what the fuck were they going to do after that? “Yeah. That’s a good thing to talk about. Tomorrow.” He yawned, as though his body needed to demonstrate how he truly was too tired for such a heavy conversation.

 

“I’m sorry I ruined your birthday,” Connor said, quiet into Dylan’s neck.

 

“You didn’t ruin my birthday, baby. I did,” Dylan said. He turned around to look at Connor. “You’re still taking me out tomorrow, right?”

 

“Of course,” Connor said.

 

“Connor?”

 

“Mmhmm?”

 

“What suit did you wear to the game tonight?”

 

Connor laughed. “Darnell’s,” he said. “His girl pinned the legs up for me. It was awful.”

 

“Is that where you went? When you left?”

 

“Yeah. Took a nap on his couch.”

 

“I’m sorry you had to do that.”

 

“It was good to cool off,” Connor admitted.

 

“Are your friends going to hate me now?”

 

“I didn’t trash you,” Connor said. Dylan was relieved. Not as relieved as he’d felt when he found Connor in his bed, but still. Having Connor’s friends like him was important to him.

 

Dylan had one more question before he could go to sleep. “Why did you come sleep in here?”

 

“I saw you in my room and didn’t want to wake you. Wasn’t sure...I dunno.” Connor shrugged. Dylan scratched his back. Connor just snuggled into him. Dylan no longer had the tension of Connor’s absence in his shoulders. Instead, it was replaced with thinking about the future.

 

_What the fuck were they going to do._

 

\---

 

The next day was Friday, and Connor kept calling it “birthday part two.” Connor willingly played video games with Dylan, ordered burgers for lunch (Dylan got some kind of perverse pleasure in watching Connor break dietary rules), watched Trailer Park Boys with him.

 

They were on the big couch in the living room, Connor’s feet up on the coffee table, Dylan’s head in his lap. Neither of them had slept well the night before for obvious reasons, so they were both tired. Connor had a big, warm hand sitting proprietarily on Dylan’s chest, right over Dylan’s heart. Maybe it was cheesy, but it made him feel safe. Dylan was having a good day. A much better day than his actual birthday.

 

Dylan was on the edge of a nap when his phone started buzzing. He pulled it out of his pocket.

 

“Hey Rhy,” Dylan answered. He hadn’t connected with his older brother the day before, so he just assumed it was a belated birthday call.

 

“Hey. Have you um. Have you seen Twitter?”

 

“That never sounds good,” Dylan said. “What am I looking for? Gimme a minute.”

 

“I’ll just send you a screenshot,” Ryan said, and Dylan felt his phone buzz a few seconds later. He pulled his phone away from his ear to look at the screen. It was a screenshot of a photo post on Twitter. He didn’t recognize the handle.

 

The photo took him a second to parse. Then he realized what it was.

 

“Oh, shit,” Dylan said.

 

“I feel like you might have something to tell me, but I’m going to let you go for now. Just wanted to give you a head’s up.”

 

“Thanks, Rhy.”

 

“Oh, and kid—happy birthday.”

 

They said goodbye, and Dylan swore.

 

“What, babe?” Connor said. Dylan showed him the photo.

 

It was from the signing at the mall, when they had been standing in the underground hallway, Connor holding his hand. Dylan hadn’t realized anyone was there, but in retrospect, he wasn’t exactly thinking about the employees as being _people._ At least not people who weren’t on Connor’s side.

 

“It’s kind of a cute picture,” Connor said, zooming in on it. You could see both of their faces. Connor looked tired, but he was also looking at Dylan with a face filled with adoration. It was arresting to see what that looked like. Dylan was terrified, but Connor’s face looked so sweet.

 

“But internally you’re screaming?” Dylan asked. He sat up on the couch so he could face Connor. It was hard to process all that this photo could mean.

 

“How many retweets and shit?” Connor asked.

 

“Almost five thousand. It only just went up.”

 

“Shit,” Connor said. He dropped his face into his hands.

 

“What are we going to do?” Dylan asked.

 

“I have no idea.”

 

“I’m going to get fired,” Dylan said.

 

“You know I don’t want that to happen,” Connor said. “I’m sorry.”

 

“What do you have to be sorry for?” Dylan asked gently. He reached out for Connor’s cheek and Connor tipped his face into Dylan’s hand.

 

“I was the one who held your hand,” Connor said. “You wouldn’t have done that in public. I shouldn’t have done that in public. I just. Needed you.” His voice was anguished.

 

Dylan’s phone started buzzing again. It was his boss.

 

“Wonderful,” Dylan said.

 

“Wait, don’t answer it,” Connor said, hovering a hand over Dylan’s phone where he was about to slide his finger across his screen. “We need to get this figured out.”

 

“What?”

 

“Well. Are we going to tell them we’re together?” Connor asked.

 

“I...what do you want?”

 

“Baby,” Connor said. Neither of them could form a thought as their bodies tried to process that feeling of a bear being in the room. Pure adrenaline and terror.

 

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Dylan said. “Fuck my job. Whatever you want.”

 

Dylan’s phone buzzed again, and this time Connor eased it out of Dylan’s hand, finding his consent in Dylan’s eyes. Dylan wasn’t sure what Connor was about to do, but he trusted him.

 

Connor answered the phone. “Hey Richard, it’s Connor.”

 

Dylan listened to Connor’s half of the conversation for a moment—Dylan’s boss reiterating that he was calling to speak with Dylan—before Connor flipped him to speaker.

 

“Dylan,” Richard said, “I was really calling to talk to you.”

 

“I’d like to be part of this conversation,” Connor said.

 

“Connor, it really doesn’t concern—”

 

“Who pays for your services, Richard? I’m the one who signs your checks,” Connor said. His voice was strong and confident. Dylan hadn’t thought about who exactly had hired a PR firm to manage the brand that is Connor McDavid if it wasn’t Connor McDavid. It was weird for that thought to have taken so long to hit him. Elite PR never talked about the McDavid contract like that. Like they worked for Connor. 

 

“Alright, you’ve made your point,” Richard said, clearly losing his patience. “Dylan I called to talk to you about a photo that’s circulating on the internet.”

 

“We’ve seen it,” Connor said.

 

“Then you two understand the complications it poses.”

 

“We understand,” Connor said.

 

“For example, Dylan, there is a clause in your contract that explicitly states your relationship with the client must remain professional.”

 

Dylan actually did not remember that. He breezed through the paperwork, and if someone had mentioned that to him, it’s not like he would have ever thought he’d end up where he was now. In love. Still, he believed it was true.

 

“That’s assuming our relationship is anything but professional,” Connor said.

 

“Can you tell me the nature of your relationship, Connor?”

 

“I don’t think it’s any of your business,” Connor said. Dylan had never seen him like this. They were both still sitting on the couch, turned toward Dylan’s phone, which Connor was holding between them. Connor had his angry face on, which Dylan was mostly familiar with from post-games when reporters were asking him how it felt for the fans to boo them off the ice.

 

The fact that he was so worked up about Dylan made Dylan feel proportionately protective about Connor.

 

“Well then, Dylan, we’re going to have to have a much harder conversation. Because this isn’t acceptable behavior.”

 

“I understand,” Dylan got out, proud of how his voice didn’t crack.

 

“I’m going to schedule a review for tomorrow morning,” he said, and Dylan just spat out a weak ‘okay.’

 

They hung up.

 

“I didn’t know if you’d be comfortable with me telling him anything,” Connor said. Dylan stood up, paced the area between the TV and the coffee table. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. Connor watched him like he was spotting him.

 

“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

 

“Okay, well we need to have a super frank conversation then,” Connor said. He paused until Dylan looked at him, caught his gaze. “Please don’t leave me.”

 

“ _Shit,_ Connor. I don’t want to,” Dylan said. “Why would I leave?”

 

"Because you want to work for the Leafs, right?" It was the first time Connor had brought that up since the beginning of the season when Dylan had mentioned that his career goals eventually led him back to Toronto. Back then, it didn't seem like a big deal. 

  
"Fuck the Leafs, Con, c'mon. I don't fucking care about that. I care about you. I'm not leaving unless you want me to leave." 

 

“Okay, so you’re staying. Good. I, um. I guess I want to tell my parents then. They’re going to see the photo. I don’t want to lie to them about this.”

 

Dylan felt his heart sink thinking about Connor’s dad. He really, really hoped that someday Connor’s dad would like him. He didn’t think it would be happening anytime soon. “Yeah, of course.”

 

“You can tell your parents.”

 

“I’m afraid to say anything, Con. I signed an NDA. You know what that shit covered. Everything.”

 

“I’ll have my lawyer dissolve it,” Connor said like it was nothing. Like it was obvious. It wasn’t obvious to Dylan. It was jaring, realizing over and over again that he and Connor had two completely different playbooks.

 

“They can do that?”

 

“Yeah, sure. It was for my protection, and now it’s getting in the way, so let’s get rid of it.” Connor stood up so he could look Dylan in the face.

 

“Thank you,” Dylan said. He pulled his hands out of the pockets of his jeans to wrap his arms around Connor. Connor held him tight. Dylan hung on to his shoulders, breathing in the spicy scent of Connor, letting the feeling of Connor’s body in his arms calm him.

 

Connor kissed his cheek.

 

“What do you think I should do?” Connor asked, pulling away a little so they could look at each other.

 

“Con, I can’t make that decision for you.” What Dylan wanted more than anything else in the entire world at that moment was for an NHL player—the best hockey player in the world—to be able to date a man without anyone giving a single shit. But that wasn’t reality.

 

“We gotta make something up,” Connor said, “like, I don’t know, it was a weird camera angle or something.” Dylan didn’t think a single person on earth would believe that, but Dylan’s job was already fucked. It didn’t make sense to fuck up Connor’s too. Whatever made Connor safe is what Dylan would do. 

 

“Okay,” Dylan said. While he wanted to just _be Connor’s boyfriend,_  there were a lot of other things to consider. It wasn’t something to take lightly. “Okay, yeah.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Connor said again. He pressed the two of them close together once more, and Dylan held him tight.

 

“It’s going to be okay,” Dylan said. He really wanted to believe that.

 

Connor tipped his head up, asking for a kiss, and like always, Dylan couldn’t deny him. It was soft, but they held their lips together for an extra-long moment. Dylan wasn’t horny at all, but he wanted to be inside him, to just be as close to Connor as possible. He wanted them to not have any clothes between them, any air between them.

 

"How did you get roped into this in the first place?" Dylan asked. It had been humming in the back of his mind since Connor made it clear that he could fire Richard if he wanted to. 

 

"I was young, the NHL was overwhelming. I was scared of making the wrong move. My rookie year, I don't know, everyone was up my ass. My dad thought it would be good for me to have the help, and I think it probably was. Rookie year at least. It was maybe a little overkill, but it was helpful. And I probably should have figured out a different situation my second year. By the third year it was a little ridiculous. I don't even know how this year happened. But I can't say I regret it now, since it brought me you." 

 

All Dylan could do was kiss him again. "We're going to figure this out," he promised, even though he had no idea how. 

 

Dylan followed Connor into the kitchen where he made smoothies, the ritual of getting out all the ingredients calming for Connor. Connor’s looked gross and green, but he made Dylan a strawberry-banana, and Dylan sipped it as they stood there, unsure of what to do.

 

“Should we even check Twitter?” Connor asked, brow pinched.

 

“Nah,” Dylan said. “I mean, I would but I don’t have a job anymore, so,” he shrugged. He wasn’t logging PR hours if he wasn’t getting paid.

 

“They haven’t fired you yet,” Connor said, hope in his voice.

 

“Baby, c’mon,” Dylan said. Of course he was getting fired.

 

“Alright,” Connor said, giving up the hope. It was ridiculous anyway. “I’m sorry. I just know how important this opportunity is to you.”

 

Dylan couldn't imagine moving across the country from Connor for a fucking job. And without that, what did it all even matter. He just shrugged. He didn’t have enough energy to muster anything more than that.

 

Then Connor’s phone rang and he fished it out of his pocket. He showed the caller to Dylan. It was his dad. “Took him long enough. I’m gonna go take this in my room.”

 

“You sure?” Dylan asked.

 

Connor nodded and headed upstairs, taking them two at a time. Dylan did not at all want to be there for that conversation, but he also selfishly wanted to know what Connor was saying.

 

Instead, he just finished his smoothie and started on dinner. They weren’t going out now, that was for sure. He put a pot of water on to boil and got a few packs of Kraft Dinner out of his secret store of junk food in his suite.

 

He tried to choose some music on his phone, but it was just blowing up, so he turned it off. He could deal with whatever when they figured out how to deal with it. Instead, he opened his computer and put on a Spotify playlist that Mikey had made the summer before. It started out with Blink 182 and reminded Dylan of college. Mikey only knew like, ten songs.

 

He poured the noodles into the water when it was boiling and grabbed some hot dogs out of the fridge. He was not fucking around with comfort food. Also, he thought he might look into UberEats-ing a cake later. It was his fucking birthday after all.

 

He was stirring neon orange powder into his noodles/butter/milk when Connor came downstairs, limbs heavy. Connor sighed.

 

“How’d your conversation with your dad go?”

 

Connor leaned against the counter and took a peek into what Dylan was cooking as he added the cut up hotdogs. He smiled at the dinner Dylan was making, and Dylan thought he might actually get Connor to eat this. He’d heard legend of Connor living in Taylor Hall’s house. At some point he’d eaten KD before. “About as well as you’d think.”

 

“Ah,” Dylan said. He could imagine how things went, but he couldn’t _know._ He hoped he was imagining worse than it was.

 

“So naturally I want to come out now,” Connor said, and Dylan gaped at him.

 

“You want to _what_?”

 

“What’s that thing where as soon as someone says don’t do something, you want to do it ten times more?”

 

“Oppositional defiance,” Dylan said. He got out two bowls from the cupboard and started dishing up their dinner.  

 

“Yeah, college boy. That. It’s that. I wanna come out cause I know it would piss my dad off.” Dylan liked when Connor called him  _college boy,_ as though Connor had anything to feel inferior about in his entire life.

 

“Not really an impulse I associate with you honestly. Maybe that’s not the best reason.”

 

“Maybe not,” Connor said. He took the bowl that Dylan handed him and took a bite. “Fuck this is good,” he said with a food moan, which was too close to a sex moan for Dylan’s taste.

 

Dylan took a bite. It tasted like home. Like childhood and innocence and not having any of the problems he currently had on his plate. It was a lot of weight to put on the shoulders of a meal, but KD with hot dogs could take it.

 

The music switched, and the song started out quiet. Connor took another bite of his food, but Dylan was already a notch happier than he’d been before the song came on.

 

“What?” Connor asked, mouth full, as Dylan’s face turned into 90% smile.

 

“This song,” Dylan said, hitting the volume button on his computer to crank it up. This was a Mikey playlist. Of course his favorite boy band was on it. “One D.”

 

“Oh, jesus, no,” Connor complained, putting his bowl down and crossing his arms. Dylan abandoned his food by the side of the computer too, shaking his hips a little as he approached Connor. He sang the lyrics along with his computer.

 

_'Cause this love is only getting stronger_

_So I don’t wanna wait any longer_

_I just wanna tell the world that you're mine girl_

 

He put his arms around Connor’s neck, trying to get Connor to dance with him.

 

“This is painful,” Connor said. He relaxed his arms though, wrapped them around Dylan’s waist.

 

“You like country music so you can shut up,” Dylan said, rolling his eyes. He kept singing, leaning into Connor’s cheek. “ _They don’t know about the up all nights. They don’t know I've waited all my life_.”

 

That got a smile out of Connor, who bobbed his head a little. Dylan scooted in closer to press Connor up against the counter.

 

“See?” Dylan said. “This is our song.”

 

“They Don’t Know About Us, huh?” Connor asked. He may not have been enjoying the song, but Dylan thought he was enjoying Dylan being close to him like this, his hands firm now on Dylan’s hips. Connor tipped his lips up, and Dylan captured them, letting his dancing melt into a light sway of his hips as Connor hummed into his mouth.

 

They kissed through another verse, Connor going soft against Dylan like he did when Dylan had him pressed up against something. Dylan pulled away, left an extra kiss on the corner of Connor’s mouth. The side that usually quirked up in his half smile, the sweet way a little parenthesis appeared there. Connor’s smile line was deep, and it was comforting that Connor had had enough smiles in his life so far to make it that way. “Maybe the song should be called ‘They Do Know About Us,’ right?”

 

Connor rolled his eyes, pushed Dylan away so he could grab his food again. “I mean, who knows about us? My parents. Maybe your brother kind of. Probably my PR team now. That’s not that many people.”

 

“And all of Twitter,” Dylan amended.

 

“Twitter doesn’t know shit,” Connor said. “I fucking hate social media.”

 

“No one knows that better than I do, baby.”

 

Connor looked grouchy, but he picked up his bowl and took another bite. He couldn’t hide the smile on his face. “This is really fucking good.”

 

“I appreciate my culinary talents being acknowledged.”

 

“Who ever said you were bad at cooking? You microwave a mean prepared meal.”

 

“You’re so rude, it’s my birthday,” Dylan scoffed.

 

“Your birthday was yesterday.”

 

“And we got in a big fight and then this morning we were maybe outed, so cheers to twenty-two I guess.”

 

“Maybe if you’re good later I’ll give you your present,” Connor said, cocking an eyebrow.

 

Dylan leaned against the counter next to him, nudged his shoulder. “That makes it sound like it’s sex.”

 

“And what else do you get the man who refuses to so much as let me buy him shoes?”

 

“You did get me shoes,” Dylan said. He rolled his eyes. He liked the Adidas, but shoes were a symbol. “Though I guess now I’m unemployed so maybe I do need your handouts.”

 

“You’re so dramatic,” Connor chided, which Dylan thought was pretty rich coming from Connor McDavid, king of the fussy pout.

 

“I’m a size twelve,” Dylan said.

 

“I like the sound of that.” Dylan couldn’t help but laugh. Connor was in a weird, silly mood that Dylan thought was probably to blame on emotional overload. The last two days had been so much. They could collapse under the weight of it, or they could joke about it. Apparently, they were joking.

 

Connor was quiet for a moment as he finished his food off. When he put his empty bowl down, Dylan stacked his own on top. “Well, if you’re not employed by Elite PR anymore, I guess that means that you should probably move out of the guest suite. That is for employees only.”

 

Dylan was really hoping that Connor would ask him what Dylan wanted Connor to ask him, instead of, you know, kicking him out. He was pretty sure he would, but there was the smallest fraction of doubt, which was enough.

 

“Are you going to put a freshly unemployed man out on the streets?” Dylan asked. He was only half joking.

 

“Well, I was thinking you could move in with your boyfriend. I hear he has about six miles of empty closet space and a way bigger bed.” Connor couldn’t keep the smile off his face as he asked.

 

“Hm, no mini fridge though,” Dylan teased.

 

“Yeah, I’d never be able to afford another mini fridge. I understand that’s a dealbreaker. Well, I guess you can stay in the garage until you can find a new place.”

 

Dylan groaned at Connor’s bad joke, but curled into him, dropping his head to Connor’s shoulder so they could hug. Dylan needed a fucking hug. He’d had two of the worst days of his life in a row, and he couldn’t imagine getting through it without Connor there to be silly and dance to One Direction and eat KD with.

 

Connor just wrapped his arms around Dylan and held him tight. Dylan was so mad at hockey in that moment (and in every moment he was thinking about Connor, which broke down to...every moment), but he was not going to take the body hockey had required of Connor for granted.

 

“So you want that present now?” Connor asked. Dylan wasn’t going to turn him down.

 

They’d had sex before in Dylan’s bed, but Dylan noticed that Connor always felt more confident in his own bed. Maybe because he wasn’t as worried about falling off of it. Dylan liked the prospect of moving into Connor’s bedroom. It felt a little soon in some respects, and really late in others. When they got up to Connor’s room, Dylan looked at it a little differently. Would his own photos of his family go up next to Connor’s?

 

Connor stripped them down, pressed Dylan onto his back in the center of the bed. They were at that tipping point where they’d had enough sex to feel a little confident with what each other liked, but not so familiar that surprises were gone. Connor spread Dylan’s legs open so he could fit between them, starting Dylan off with a sloppy blowjob. Connor was good at blowjobs. Anything where Dylan’s pleasure was his focus was something he excelled at. When there were no distractions, Connor paid close attention, watched for Dylan’s tells.

 

It was a bit of a different story when Dylan had his hands on Connor in any way. His focus went out the window and he became almost useless. Dylan loved getting him to that point. It was sexy.

 

Dylan had a hand in Connor’s hair, blond and shining, fluffy without product. He looked down to see Connor’s eyes on him. Sex in general was a connection, but there were always moments where they felt like there wasn’t any space between them at all. Like their two selves were one. And eye contact was good at making Dylan feel that way. He’d never had that kind of connection with anyone else before.

 

He was a little sad when Connor pulled off, lips shiny with spit. “I have an idea that you can say no to if you don’t want to do it.”

 

Dylan could feel the surge of blood to his dick at those words. His brain did a thousand things, had a thousand ideas of what Connor could mean, and he would be willing to do basically any of them. “Yes.”

 

“You can’t say yes, you don’t know what it is yet,” Connor said.

 

“Probably yes? Yes to you telling me your idea at least.”

 

“Okay,” Connor said. He was sitting back on his heels and Dylan just took in his body. This late in the season, he’d lost the bulk he’d started in October with. But the musculature was still there, his shoulders were still broad, jaw still strong. Dylan had never been one for blondes, but Connor’s blue eyes changed color with the sky, his blonde beard was so soft against Dylan’s skin. Dylan wanted to reach out and touch Connor, pull him close. He wanted to keep him.

 

Instead, when Connor moved, it was to crawl to the side of the bed so he could dig in the side table. From the bottom drawer, he pulled out a dildo, bigger and thicker than Dylan, but not terrifying. Connor looked almost proud holding it.

 

“Oh,” Dylan said. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. It wasn’t what he’d been thinking about.

 

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to stick it up you,” he said, responding to the look on Dylan’s face. “I was thinking you could use it on me. If you wanted. I know it’s your birthday and everything so if that doesn’t sound like a birthday present we could try it some other time, or we don’t have to do it at all.”

 

Oh, Dylan realized. Connor had joked in the past about using a dildo, but it wasn’t a joke. It was real. It was this one, that Connor was holding right now. The dildo Connor was holding had _been in him._

 

“Wow,” Dylan said, his head ten steps ahead of the two of them, already thinking about what it would look like in Connor, stretching him open. “Yes.”

 

“Yeah?” Connor asked. Connor was bold when he was horny. He asked for what he wanted. But he could still be a little bashful about it, and right then he had some color on his cheeks.

 

“Oh, fuck yes,” Dylan said. He pushed himself up off the bed so he could kiss Connor, his hands coming up to cup Connor’s jaw. It was a messy, clumsy kiss, but he used the surprise to wrestle Connor a little, playfight him down onto the bed. Dylan was sure that if Connor wanted to, he would be strong enough to win every time, but it wasn’t about that. Connor wanted to be on his back. He let Dylan take him there.

 

“So how do we do this?” Dylan asked, wanting to take the dildo from Connor but not sure enough of himself to actually do it. Dylan had never used one before, on himself or anyone else.

 

“It’s pretty much the same as when you open me up normally,” Connor said. “Lots of lube. Go slow. You know what I like.” Connor had confidence in Dylan, and it warmed him. Dylan did know what Connor liked. Well, maybe not when it came to dildos but with regular sex he did. And it probably wouldn’t be any different.

 

Dylan got the lube, and Connor set the dildo beside them for when he was ready. He spread his legs, knees bent, and Dylan’s mouth went dry. Dylan could get hard thinking about Connor’s fucking teeth, so seeing him on display like this was always a lot. Dylan just stared a second, looked his fill. Took in the hair on Connor’s belly that trailed down, the flush that was creeping on his chest.

 

“C’mon, man,” Connor said, half impatient, half shy.

 

“Yeah, babe,” Dylan agreed, slicking his fingers up. Dylan was on his knees between Connor’s legs, and he put one hand on Connor’s thigh, just easing him open one little bit more before sliding his slick fingers between Connor’s cheeks.

 

Connor let out a little huff of air, grabbed the sheets in fists. Dylan could tell it would be the kind of night where they took their time, got lost in each other. He loved losing time to sex. Loved looking at the clock after and thinking _wow, that was like the whole afternoon._ Or, _shit we’re going to be so tired in the morning._ He loved spending time with Connor in any capacity, but working a finger into him slowly was something special.

 

Connor let a deep breath as Dylan slid his finger in, slow and slick. His head was back on the pillow, eyes closed as he focused on the feeling of Dylan slipping into him. Dylan pressed a kiss to the inside of one of Connor’s knees and kept going.

 

His favorite game to play when opening Connor up was to try to get him to make every sound he could make. Surprised little gasps, deep, satisfied moans. Sometimes he even tried to get Connor to laugh, which Dylan was pretty sure was the best sound in the world.

 

When he got up to three fingers, Connor found words. “Baby, baby,” he said, voice already sounding broken and used from the panting and moaning he’d been doing. He reached over to find the dildo on the bed, and shoved it toward Dylan. He took it.

 

It wasn’t quite soft, but it certainly wasn’t hard. Dylan wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t really this. He poked at it a bit, pinched the head. Connor laughed at him.

 

“Is this really your first?” Connor asked, astonished.

 

“I’m not really one for having stuff in my ass,” Dylan said, shrugging. He’d tried but it wasn’t his cup of tea.

 

“I guess that makes sense. It’s not weird, I promise. It feels so fucking good.”

 

Dylan couldn’t help but smile at that, the shamelessness Connor had in the middle of sex. How bad he just wanted Dylan to make him come. Make him feel good for every second up until he came.

 

“You gotta slick it up too,” Connor said.

 

“That much was pretty obvious, actually,” Dylan teased. “Hmm.”

 

“What?”

 

“Let’s do that thing with a pillow,” Dylan said, grabbing a pillow from the headboard. Connor lifted his hips and Dylan stuffed it under there, giving Connor a little lift, a little better access for Dylan.

 

Dylan could really get a good look at Connor’s hole now, shiny and stretched.

 

He lubed up the dildo, gave it a good look. Took a breath.

 

“You don’t need to have a strategy meeting with it, just, you know. Go slow.”

 

Dylan took a deep breath as though someone was about to shove something big up _his_ ass. Then he lined up the tip against Connor and pushed, so gently.

 

It was so different than when he pressed himself inside Connor. He felt like he had more control and less control. It was so different. Connor had his eyes shut tight, teeth clenched, fists in the sheets. It didn’t look like it felt _good_ exactly, but finally, the head of it slipped in, and Connor let out a breath. Dylan stopped pushing, gave him a break.

 

“Fuck,” Connor said. He was panting already, worked up from Dylan’s fingers, the press of the dildo. “Jesus, that feels good.”

 

“Yeah?” Dylan asked. He was unsure of this whole process. Hearing Connor was enjoying himself was a relief he didn’t know he needed.

 

Connor finally met his gaze. “Yeah,” he said emphatically. “Keep going.”

 

Dylan eased it in deeper into Connor, bit by bit, just like he would his actual dick. Even though there was decidedly more of the dildo. Connor was breathing hard. He had a sheen of sweat at his forehead. His mouth was hanging open. Dylan kept slipping it inside of him.

 

With Connor’s pleasure coming from being fucked by a dildo instead of Dylan’s dick, Dylan had more focus. His head a bit clearer. Not much, seeing Connor’s ass like this, but more than if his dick was buried in Connor instead.

 

Connor tilted his hips to meet one of Dylan’s little thrusts, and let out a moan in earnest, and Dylan knew he was ready for more. He started thrusting, the motion so different than when thrusts came from your hips. He tried to imagine how Connor did this when he was alone. He wondered if that was something he could feasibly talk Connor into. Giving Dylan a show.

 

“Is this how you do it when you’re alone?” Dylan asked. He crawled forward enough to hover over Connor, keeping one hand on the dildo, using the other to prop himself up over Connor. Connor’s hands came up to him immediately, grabbing his shoulders, hands sliding to his neck, his jaw. Connor kissed him instead of answering his question. It was centering. It was connection. Dylan pulled the dildo out a little further than he had been, gave it a good thrust back in.

 

Connor broke the kiss to let out a moan, guttural and gorgeous. Dylan wanted to do that over and over again, and he tried, feeling like he was getting the hang of this now.

 

Connor had a good grip on Dylan’s shoulder, and he dropped his other hand down to grab his dick, stroking himself in time with Dylan’s thrusts.

 

“Faster,” Connor said, and Dylan complied, giving it to Connor a little rougher than he normally would be able to. He could see Connor losing it, crumbling to pieces below him, shaking already, chanting Dylan’s name between moans.

 

If Dylan had had an extra hand, he would have been working on himself, but it was impossible like this. Instead, he just bore witness to Connor, the way he trembled as he came, the grip on Dylan’s shoulder tightening almost painfully before dropping away, one hand covering his face.

 

Dylan’s thrusts were slow and soft as he fucked Connor through his orgasm, until he shivered and told Dylan to stop. Dylan pulled the dildo out and tossed it aside, not wasting any time covering Connor with his body and pressing kisses to the side of his face. Connor’s stomach was sticky, but Dylan didn’t give a fuck. He’d moved between Connor’s legs the way they would be if they’d been fucking for real, let Connor’s breath even out before kissing him, lush and slow.

 

“Baby,” Dylan said into the kiss. “Jesus, I’ve never seen you come so hard.”

 

Connor looked completely blissed out, his face so relaxed and happy he couldn’t even muster his biggest smile. He just pulled Dylan into another kiss.

 

“Gimme another minute or two and then you can get in me,” Connor said. Dylan was pretty sure that every single second they were having sex was the hottest thing he’d ever experienced, everything Connor said the sexiest pillow talk. He was so worked up, so horny it hurt, and he couldn’t imagine having to wait another second. But Dylan was also a little surprised Connor was going to let Dylan fuck him. He probably knew Dylan wouldn’t last long.

 

Connor’s breathing slowed and he gave Dylan a pat on his ass. “Okay.”

 

“Okay, I can…”

 

“Yes, please fuck me,” Connor said, rolling his eyes at Dylan.

 

“I just like hearing you say it,” Dylan said, both in a consent way and in a dirty talk way. The lube was still close, and he slicked himself up and pushed in.

 

Connor wasn’t loose, but it didn’t feel like the normal first thrust, where he had to be careful about not hurting Connor. Connor was already good to go. When he pushed in, he slid true, all the way till his hips were right up against Connor’s ass.

 

“Wow,” Dylan said, pulling back and snapping his hips again. Connor’s relaxed smile widened at Dylan’s reaction. Dylan’s hips found their rhythm. Nothing in the history of the world felt like this, being with the man he loved like this. Dylan was secretly a little romantic, and he was so into the idea of being connected to Connor like this, touching him where almost no one else has.

 

He tucked his face into Connor’s neck, the smell of his favorite person overwhelming him. It was so much, to have made Connor come so hard, to be in him so deep, to have Connor’s arms wrapped around him.

 

“On my hands and knees,” Connor said, just a whisper in his ear.

 

“Huh?” Dylan asked. He wasn’t sure if he could switch positions now. He was close. He pulled back to look Connor in the face.

 

“That’s how I usually do it alone. On my hands and knees.”

 

The image was overwhelming. He spat out a curse, his hips driving forward on their own accord as he came in Connor. Connor’s hands were already on his shoulders and back, gentling him. He collapsed on Connor, let Connor take his entire weight as he slipped out of him.

 

“Baby,” he whined, a true complaint. He was thinking he’d have to go jerk off to the image of Connor fucking himself with a dildo on his hands and knees like _right now maybe_. Connor just laughed at him.

 

“Good birthday sex?” Connor asked. Connor always did a post-mortem. Dylan was glad there was no video-review portion of the evening.

 

“Really fucking phenomenal,” Dylan said. He wasn’t lying. He’d never turn down an orgasm with Connor, but shit. He loved trying new things. Loved that Connor trusted him enough to share that with him.

 

Dylan flopped to the side, threw a leg between Connor’s legs. He had his head on Connor’s chest, both of their stomachs sticky with come.

 

“I love you,” Connor said, a weight to his tone of voice that made Dylan think that it wasn’t just a response to his birthday, or to the sex they’d just had. It was something heavier. It was serious. It was a _I love you through all the shit we’re about to go through._

 

“I love you, too,” Dylan said, trying to give it the same amount of gravity. He felt relief in saying it out loud for the first time, relief that Connor had said it first. “I love you,” he repeated. He wanted to say it a thousand times more.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thank you so much to everyone who has read along as I've posted this. You guys are all stars <3 This fic has taken so much of my mental energy over the last several months. I can't believe it's done now. It's crazy. I'm a little sad. I really hope you guys like this last bit.

Dylan took a breath as he sat down at his desk for his final conference call. He knew he was getting fired. He’d had a day to come to terms with it and. Well. It was what it was. 

 

He was in his suite, his stuff partially packed up to drag down the hall. Connor had a day full of practice and meetings, and since Dylan was getting fired, he wasn’t going to any of that with Connor like he normally would. Connor had left him that morning with a soft kiss, and a promise to make Dylan feel better when he came home. Dylan was holding onto that promise as he answered his call. 

 

“Dylan,” Richard greeted, his voice familiar over their phone connection. Dylan hadn’t seen him in person in over a month. Almost all of his work could be done remotely from the comfort of Connor’s house. 

 

“Good morning,” Dylan said. He had decided to be professional and gracious, and not act like a little kid about this. He was getting fired for fucking the client after all. It’s not like he was innocent here. 

 

“I know this is going to be a difficult conversation, but I was hoping you would be able to have an open mind today,” Richard said. Dylan didn’t know what that meant. He’d never been fired before. Was this how it went?

 

“Absolutely, sir,” Dylan agreed. He had been raised to be a nice Canadian kid, and at least for now, this was his boss. 

 

“Dylan, I got to admit, I’m disappointed to have to be doing this today. Not only because I think you’re a bright kid, but because you’re honestly the best person we’ve ever had in this role, myself included. This year we took a risk on hiring a younger guy, someone Connor’s age. We didn’t know if you would be able to handle the responsibility, but you did with flying colors. You also were able to make Connor happy. Every report I’ve heard outside of yours have really framed Connor as being more balanced and grounded this year. And that’s not nothing."

 

This didn't sound to Dylan like he was getting fired. It sounded like he was getting complimented. 

 

“Of course, I still to have to let you go." Dylan dropped back down to earth. Of course he was still getting fired. "The nature of the relationship you have with Connor isn’t appropriate for your role. However, I have an offer for you.” 

 

Dylan was feeling whiplash. He’d never had a performance review before with Richard. He got the feeling that he was doing things correctly because he wasn’t receiving negative feedback, but he also wasn’t receiving positive feedback. He had no one to compare himself to. Hearing he had been doing well was almost harder than hearing he was being fired. 

 

“Okay,” Dylan said, because he wasn’t sure what else to say. How often do you hear the words ‘offer’ while being let go? He should have done some more research on being fired. He suddenly didn’t feel prepared for this. 

 

“Dylan, we know you’ve done a great job here this year, and the original deal was that after your year, we would help you into a role that would otherwise be challenging to achieve at such a young age. A springboard for your career. I’m still willing to do that for you. I’m willing to forgo mentioning your relationship with McDavid, and to serve as a positive reference for you in the future as well. You know I’m close with the head of Leaf’s PR. I can get you the job we discussed at the beginning of the year.” 

 

“Wow,” Dylan said, not really believing what Richard was saying. It sounded too good to be true. 

 

“In exchange,” Richard started, and Dylan felt his heart sink. Of course it would be an exchange. “We would like for you to go home to Toronto, and stay out of contact with Connor.” 

 

“Oh,” Dylan said. And there it was. That was the cost having his dreams fulfilled. Leave the man he loves. 

 

“I understand that’s a big ask, which is why I’m tying it to a big payoff. The truth is that Connor being in a relationship with a man is a liability for the Oilers, for the NHL, for all of Connor’s partnerships. It’s a liability for Connor as well. I don’t think you understand how catastrophic it would be if the public found out about him. What would collapse. That’s something that we have to be very careful about. 

 

“This isn’t just for us, Dylan. This is for Connor. I don’t know what your feelings are for him, but if you care about him, you’ll consider this. The damage that you could bring to his career and to his life isn’t something that can be corrected, fixed, or walked back. It would be permanent. It could ruin him.” 

 

Richard paused, gave Dylan space to think. It was so much, to feel the weight of having his dream job on offer. The weight of Connor’s happiness. It sounded true, what Richard was saying. How much Dylan could ruin everything for Connor. Dylan didn’t want to ruin anything for him. He didn’t want to bring Connor one single scrap of unhappiness. 

 

“I know that’s a lot to take in,” Richard said, his tone changing to something empathetic, understanding. “I also wanted to say that we would offer a generous severance, if you left today. I’ve booked you a ticket to Toronto.”

 

“Wow,” Dylan said. He thought about Connor. He thought about leaving Connor. Leaving the boy he loved. Connor had had a hell of a season. Dylan had been by his side through a lot of shit. But Richard was right. If Connor was actually outed, what would Dylan being by his side do for that? What good could it bring? Maybe it was better for him to go. It would be painful. Dylan had never felt the way he feels about Connor about anyone else. 

 

But maybe loving him that much meant that he needed to let him go. 

 

It killed him to think about. But he thought about how the fans had turned on them this year. How rampant homophobia was in the NHL. In professional sports in general. He thought about how Connor would be skewered if he were outed. 

 

“Okay,” he heard himself saying, voice raspy. It felt wrong. His chest twisted, he could barely take a full breath in. He wanted to cry. He hated himself. He cleared his throat and said it again. “Okay.” 

 

“Alright, kiddo, that’s the right decision. Someday, Connor will thank you,” Richard said, and took Dylan through the details of his flight. They would stay in touch, making sure that Dylan had stayed away from Connor through the summer. In the fall, when Connor was back in Edmonton alone, Dylan would get his reference. His dream job. His severance. 

 

All of it made him feel dirty. 

 

But he packed his bags. He didn’t have as much stuff as he’d thought. Mostly just clothes. A lot of it was already packed for moving into Connor's room. He left his junk food. His work computer. His toiletries. Tucked his picture frames into his backpack. He’d call his mom when he got to the airport, hopefully explain things a little better. 

 

He couldn’t help but slip a grey Oilers t-shirt with a 97 on the shoulder into his big suitcase, or pocket the deck of cards Connor kept on Dylan’s side table. He couldn’t leave with nothing. 

 

He got into his car and took a deep breath. He wanted to cry. He knew he would cry, but now wasn’t the time for that. He could cry when he made it home. Until then, he’d control himself. He took another breath in through his nose, out through his mouth. Then he put his car in reverse, backed out of Connor’s garage for the last time, and pointed his car to the airport. 

 

The drive was silent. He didn’t want music on, or a podcast. What he wanted was for Connor to be in his passenger seat, arguing with him about something. About where to get dinner, or how long he had to stay at an event. What he had to wear to the game the next day. What to do with their day off. 

 

His heart kept clenching and clenching until he got to the exit for the airport. He put his blinker on to take the exit, but he couldn’t manage to actually take the off-ramp. His car stayed steady on its path. 

 

Dylan was shaking. He looked at the clock. Practice had been out for a little while. Connor wouldn’t find his empty house for hours because of how long his own day was, but the rest of the team would be home by now. And Dylan only really knew two other Oilers. 

 

And Leon’s house was close. 

 

Leon wasn’t Dylan’s friend, but they had texted a little before, when the Oilers were on the road and Leon was trying to figure out anything to help cheer up Connor. Dylan had been to his house, knew where it was. And it wasn’t far. 

 

Dylan turned the car around, backtracking a little, taking the exit that would lead to Leon’s. Dylan didn’t know what he was doing, but he knew that if anyone else in Edmonton actually cared about Connor, it was Leon. 

 

Dylan parked in his driveway. He had his bags in the back seat, hands still shaking. He made himself get out of his car, made himself walk to Leon’s door, make himself ring the doorbell. 

 

When Leon answered it, he was in the kind of sportswear that was casual but looked like it cost as much as a well-tailored suit. He looked at Dylan with confusion. “Hey man, what’s wrong?” 

 

“Um, can I come in?” Dylan asked. He was probably overreacting. He knew that he was supposed to keep a firmer handle on his emotions, but he had just agreed to leave the love of his life because his ex-boss had asked him to while he was firing him, so he was on edge. 

 

Leon ushered him inside, led Dylan to the kitchen table. Leon’s house was homier than Connor’s, with more decorations, more throw pillows, and flowers that were actually alive. Dylan attributed this all to the fact that Leon’s girlfriend lived here, but who knows. Maybe Leon just liked real flowers, and Connor just didn’t give a shit. 

 

He couldn’t stop every thought from circling back around to Connor. 

 

Leon stopped in the kitchen to get them glasses of water. When he settled in the chair next to Dylan’s, he set a glass in front of him and gave him eyebrows that said  _ drink first. _ So Dylan downed half the glass. It helped a little. 

 

“Okay. What’s going on?” Leon asked. “Connor was fine in practice this morning. Is this about that photo on Twitter?” 

 

“Yes. No. Kind of,” Dylan said. 

 

Leon chuckled a little, nervous more than anything. “I don’t know what that means. Sounds like yes.” 

 

“My boss found it. And he fired me this morning.” 

 

“Oh,” Leon said, genuine surprise on his face. “You okay? How’d Con take that?” Dylan always liked that Leon called him Con or Connor, instead of Davo. It made them feel like real friends, and not just hockey friends. 

 

“Um, I mean, he felt bad obviously.” 

 

“I’m sorry that happened,” Leon said. It sounded like he meant it. It also sounded a little like  _ but why are you actually here? _

 

“My boss asked me to leave him,” Dylan said. He could see Leon’s face change. Something dawn on it. “And I said yes. I’m on my way to the airport, kind of. I was on my way to the airport.” 

 

“Fuck, Strome, that’s—you’re not actually going to.” It wasn’t a question. It was an assumption. If anyone had seen who Connor and Dylan actually were together, as a couple, it was Leon. 

 

“I don’t know what choice I have,” Dylan said. “If he’s outed and it’s my fault, everything would be ruined for him.” 

 

“What?” Leon asked, his brows furrowed in confusion. 

 

“I can’t be responsible for his career ending.” 

 

“Connor’s career isn’t ending, no matter how gay he is, dude. C’mon.” Leon had this tone that let Dylan know that he thought Dylan was the stupidest person in the world. “He’s Connor McDavid. The fact that he likes dick isn’t going to mean anything for him. He’s  _ Connor McDavid.”  _

 

“What about the backlash? Fans already boo him enough. I can’t put him through more of that.” Dylan couldn’t stop imaging Edmonton turning on him. What the beat reporters would say to his face. What strangers would yell at him. 

 

“Did you stop to think about what would happen if you actually left? How that would make him feel? I can promise you Connor would rather be booed than lose you. I swear, since fucking September you are the only thing he’s talked about at all. And every time he does, you know what his face does? It goes all mushy and annoying. Because he’s in love with you.” 

 

“Leon—“

 

“Shut up, dude. You’ve only known Connor for this season. But I’ve known him for longer. And in all the time I’ve known him, he’s been kind of a sad bastard. He takes everything so hard, so personally. He thinks everything is his fault. He thinks everything is his responsibility. But you know what? This year has been the worst year. It’s been a fucking rollercoaster for all of us. And Connor has never been happier. Because of you. And I swear to God if you leave him, I will track you down and throttle you.” 

 

It was the most Dylan had ever heard Leon talk by about a thousand words. He didn’t know how to respond. 

 

“And you absolutely aren’t leaving him without talking to him about it first.” 

 

“I don’t know what to even say,” Dylan said. In the past three days, they got in a huge fight, almost (maybe) got outed, said  _ I love you _ for the first time, and Dylan got fired. Not only fired, but offered a very confusing severance package tied up with ending the first serious romantic relationship he’d ever really been in. He was wrung the fuck out. He didn’t know what his emotions were even  _ doing.  _ He kind of just wanted to go home so his mom could hug him. 

 

“If you leave, you will damage something that doesn’t need to be damaged. You need to talk this through with him,” Leon said. 

 

Dylan took another sip of water. Leon checked his phone when it buzzed. 

 

“Listen, I’m going to order some lunch okay? And you’re going to stay put.” 

 

“Leon,” Dylan said, as Leon opened up his SkipTheDishes app.

 

“Yeah, bud?” 

 

“Thanks.” 

 

“I’m glad you came here. I’m not exactly on the way.” 

 

“You’re not really out of the way.” 

 

Leon shrugged. “We’re doing burgers because fuck everything,” Leon said, and put together a delivery order, shouting at Celeste who was upstairs for what she wanted too. 

 

Leon marched Dylan over to the couch in the living room and distracted him with Fortnite for a half hour before Leon’s doorbell rang. 

 

“Hey, wanna grab that? I already paid and tipped and everything,” Leon said, since Leon was playing a round without Dylan. 

 

Dylan nodded and stood up, heading to the front door. When he pulled it open, he expected a delivery man but instead, it was Connor. 

 

“Oh,” Dylan said, heart clenching, nerves frayed, breaths short. He wasn’t prepared for this, but he supposed if he’d known Connor would show up, he would have slipped out the bathroom window or something. 

 

“Your bags really are in the backseat of your car,” Connor said, his face confused and hurt. “Leon texted me. I came as soon as I could. You’re not… _baby_.” His voice was a whine, desperate and sad. 

 

“I thought I had to. I thought it was the best for you.” 

 

Connor reached for him, hand gentle on Dylan’s wrist, and pulled him outside so they could close the front door. They sat on the front stoop, and Dylan thought it would be awkward when the delivery guy actually showed up. And then he thought about how Leon probably didn’t actually order food. He was probably just texting Connor. 

 

Connor laced their fingers together, set their hands on Dylan’s knee. 

 

“I called Richard on the way over here,” Connor said. “And I fired him.”

 

“Good for you,” Dylan said. He believed it. Connor didn’t need someone so far up his ass every second. Connor was a good kid. Connor was an adult now. 

 

“He told me what he offered you. And why.” 

 

“I didn’t care about the job offer, Con. I didn’t care about the severance. Fuck severance. But when he talked about how much me being around was going to hurt you—“

 

“Richard is an asshole who doesn’t know anything,” Connor said. “Being with you would never cause me pain. Being with you would never be a mistake. So fucking what if I’m outed. So fucking what. As long as I’m with you, just. Whatever. Nothing else matters. But Dyl. You can’t leave me.” His voice cracked at the end, eyes threatening a tear. 

 

Dylan squeezed Connor’s hand, wrapped his other hand around the back of Connor’s so it was sandwiched between his own. “I want to kiss you but we’re in public,” Dylan said, a nervous laugh. 

 

Just then a car pulled into the driveway and Dylan and Connor very calmly disentangled their hands. Apparently, Leon had actually ordered food. Connor pulled his baseball cap down, and Dylan walked out to the car to avoid the driver getting a close up of Connor to grab their burgers. 

 

Connor opened the front door for him and they headed inside, Connor sticking close. Leon met them in the kitchen, where Dylan set the food down. 

 

“Please take your burgers and leave,” Leon said, looking from Connor to Dylan. “I’ll get your fucking car back to you later. Drive with your boy.” 

 

They took the advice, Connor getting behind the wheel of Dylan’s car, shooting a look to the contents of the back seat and letting out a sigh. 

 

When they got back on the highway headed home, Connor finally spoke. 

 

“Do you want to break up?” He asked, voice steeled and impenetrable like he had been working himself up to ask this question. “Because if you actually want to leave, I’m not going to make you stay.” 

 

“I’m in love with you,” Dylan breathed, the idea of leaving Connor feeling actually insane, now that he’d had time to cool down. 

 

“That doesn’t answer the question,” Connor pointed out. 

 

“I want to be with you. I’m in this. I want you. I want it to be you and me forever.” Forever was a big word. But Dylan couldn’t imagine his life—any part of it at this point, up until the day he died—being better without Connor. 

 

“Then you can’t pull this shit on me again,” Connor said. “You can’t fucking pack your bags and drive to the airport. You don’t get to do that to me.” 

 

“No,” Dylan agreed. “I promise. Never again. The past few days have been…chaos. I didn’t know what I was even thinking.” 

 

Connor reached a hand over from the steering wheel to rest it on Dylan’s knee. He gave it a squeeze. 

 

“Yeah. The past few days have been rough. So I’ll give you a pass for this one. But never again.” 

 

“Never again,” Dylan agreed. He didn’t want to be in the car anymore. He wanted to be in Connor’s bed. 

 

When they got home, Connor grabbed his bags from the back and hauled them straight upstairs and directly into his room. Well, Dylan had been planning on moving into Connor’s room anyway. His luggage just took a longer journey than anticipated. Dylan put the food in the fridge before following him. 

 

Connor looked sad, but he was stripping anyway, and Dylan followed suit, crawling in bed after Connor. It was tentative, sliding up close to Connor, like it hadn’t been in months. Connor closed the gap between them, millimeter by millimeter, until he could fit their lips together. He put his hands on Dylan’s chest, slid a leg between Dylan’s. 

 

Their kiss was soft, gentle. Dylan wrapped his arms around Connor’s waist, pulling him close. It didn’t feel sexy. They weren’t naked in order to get off. They were naked in order to be as close to each other as they could be. 

 

Their kiss progressed from something soft to something wet. Dylan would have been a fucking idiot to have given this up. No one kissed like Connor. A little aggressive, a little teasing, plenty needy. Connor’s kiss was fucking everything. 

 

—

 

“I don’t even know what the point is,” Connor said, the darkness surrounding them on their first night together in  _ their room _ . They hadn’t left the bed since they’d returned from Leon’s. Dylan had his head on Connor’s chest. Could hear the rumble of his voice, the beat of his heart. Being this close to Connor’s heart made him remember how fragile Connor was. How fragile they all were. 

 

“Like,” Connor continued, “I worked my entire life to get where I am, and I’m just stuck here with this contract that makes me feel like shit every single day, on this team that isn’t even going to make the playoffs. My fans hate me. Today my dad called me and said the  _ best option _ to shut Twitter rumors up would be to get a girlfriend, or at least a fake girlfriend so hockey fans think I’m straight. Like, fuck. Not even my dad wants me to be me.” 

 

His words came out in a burst, and Dylan could hear his heart beating faster at the end of it. He was never very far from being worked up these days. 

 

“Your dad wants you to get a girlfriend?” Dylan asked. Dylan loved Connor with his whole, whole heart, but he desperately wished anyone else was Connor’s dad. 

 

“Yeah,” Connor said. “He called this afternoon. Said he’d been talking to Richard and it would be a good distraction or something.” 

 

“That’s dumb. People see a photo of you holding hands with a guy and you suddenly have a girlfriend? That would be as much a confirmation as a selfie of us right now.” 

 

“You’re right,” Connor said. “You’re so fucking smart.”

 

Dylan blushed because he couldn’t take a compliment from Connor with any humility. It was  _ Connor _ saying nice things about him. He cared about Connor’s opinion more than anyone else’s. 

 

The tone of Connor’s voice changed from irritated to kind of soft. “What would you think about going home while I’m on that roadie coming up?” Connor asked. “I know you miss your family, Mikey. I’ll buy your tickets. For your birthday.” 

 

“I can buy my own plane tickets,” Dylan said, the response coming out of his mouth without even thinking about it. It was just a knee-jerk reaction at that point. 

 

“I know you can. I’m not saying you can’t. I’m just saying, I’ll be gone for five days and I don’t want you to be alone here. Because if I could bring you with me I’d rather do that. But instead I want to treat you to a trip home. Please.” 

 

Dylan lifted his head up to nuzzle Connor’s fuzzy cheek until Connor turned his head to catch Dylan’s lips in a kiss. Months ago, Dylan couldn’t have imagined how familiar Connor’s lips were. How much Connor’s body felt like an anchor. How Connor had become  _ Dylan’s person _ . Sure, he had best friends. But he had never had a connection with someone the way he had connected with Connor, on all levels. Some days it felt like their nervous systems were tangled up together, like their hearts were beating the same blood. When they slept next to each other, their lungs breathed the same air. Dylan had never been in love before. Had never thought about whether his lungs were carrying around the already-processed air molecules that had been in someone else’s chest. 

 

Connor’s big hand covered the hinge of Dylan’s jaw, fingers tangling in the hair at the back of Dylan’s neck. Connor kissed him breathless. They both needed it, to share a kiss like that, legs tangled like tree roots. Dylan tried hard to imagine it was as permanent as a pair of old-growth oaks. 

 

“You’re not retiring,” Dylan said, bringing their conversation back around. “You’re twenty-two. You’re the most ambitious person I’ve ever met. Just because you’re annoyed doesn’t mean you’re going to give up your dream. I know you.”

 

“You do,” Connor said, confirming that Dylan was right. “It’s driving me fucking crazy to know that we’re probably not going to make playoffs. That it would take a miracle to make playoffs at this point.” 

  
  


\---

 

Being back in the house Dylan lived in during college was surreal. 

 

It was a turn-of-the-century two-story with the most awkwardly shaped rooms in the entire world. The built-ins in the living room were filled with empty alcohol bottles from memorable (or not-memorable) nights. There was trash piling up on the counters. After living in Connor’s nice house for so many months, being back was like doing a 180. Not that he really  _ wanted _ to take the garbage out at the moment, but he wouldn’t have been able to tolerate this mess at Connor’s. 

 

Here, it was part of the scenery. 

 

They were in Mikey’s room, on day two of Dylan’s trip back home. He’d slept in his childhood bed the night before. His mom had made a pork roast special for him. Both his brothers came to dinner. He told them about Connor. His mom convinced him to arrange a Skype meeting with Connor and Dylan’s parents before Dylan left. It was overwhelming, but in a good way. He was pretty sure his mom had already ordered herself a McDavid jersey. 

 

Dylan watched Mikey play Fortnite on a TV that took up most of one of Mikey’s walls, which was more a testament to how small the room was, not how large the TV was. He had his head tucked on Mikey’s shoulder, their backs resting against the headboard. Dylan had spent many nights in this bedroom doing exactly this. Sometimes falling asleep while watching Netflix together. 

 

“I knew you liked him,” Mikey teased. 

 

“Martians could see that I liked Connor, it’s not like I was subtle about it,” Dylan admitted. 

 

“I can’t believe you landed a rich boy. My post-college strategy was going to be to marry rich, and you stole my plan. Does he have any single buddies?”

 

“Pretty sure his friends are straight,” Dylan said. 

 

“Bummer. Nothing I would want more than to be a WAG with you.” 

 

“I’m not a fucking WAG,” Dylan said. “WAGs volunteer at soup kitchens and sell makeup through pyramid schemes. I’m just his boyfriend.” 

 

“Well, whatever you call it. Is he good in bed?” 

 

“Michael,” Dylan said. 

 

“C’mon, when have you not told me about your sex life?” Mikey asked, shooting someone in the head on screen. The eye of the storm was shrinking. 

 

“Never,” Dylan said. 

 

“That’s true. He’s nice to you though?” 

 

“Connor is…” Dylan could hear his voice going all soft even just saying his name. He missed Connor more than usual, being so far away from the house, from Edmonton. From the clothes in Connor’s closet that Dylan could smell if he needed to. He had packed a pair of Connor’s sweats he was planning on taking some photos for Connor in. Maybe not showing off the fact that they were a little short. 

 

“So you’re just gone for him?” 

 

“I’m in love with him,” Dylan explained. 

 

“You sound disappointed.”

 

“I’m in love with Connor McDavid. The face of his franchise, maybe even his league. His professional hockey league. He is a literal millionaire. He’s deeply closeted. It’s...complicated.” 

 

“Millionaire doesn’t sound complicated.” 

 

“Mikey, he makes so much more money than I do that if I made literally zero dollars, it would hardly affect the differential between us.” 

 

“Is he weird about it?” Mikey asked. It was easier to have this conversation with Mikey’s eyes on the TV screen. It helped Dylan feel like maybe it wasn’t happening. 

 

“No, Connor isn’t like that. He has some nice things because his teammates pressure him into buying like, designer stuff, but that’s mostly to maintain this baseline of being able to fly under the radar in every aspect except his hockey. He’s constantly trying to spend money on me. Which would be fine. You know? An outfit here or there, whatever. But I keep thinking about the rest of our lives—”

 

“The rest of your lives?” Mike took his eyes off the TV to look at Dylan. On screen, his character died. He tossed his remote to the side. “So this is really serious.” 

 

“This is really serious,” Dylan said. 

 

“You’ll figure the money stuff out. It’s pretty obvious that’s not why you’re there, right?” 

 

“I could give a shit about how much he made. Honestly, it would be easier if he made less.” 

 

“Then there you go. Are you willing to be with a closeted man though?” 

 

“I never thought I would be, Mike. Shit, remember that closeted guy you dated in college, Aaron?”

 

“Fuck Aaron.” 

 

“Exactly,” Dylan said. “He was just ashamed of being gay, and that’s not fucking right. But I don’t think Connor is closeted because he’s ashamed. I think he’s closeted because of the NHL. Like, if he’d ended up a real estate agent instead, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” 

 

“You didn’t answer my question really.” 

 

“Well, I can’t imagine not being with him at this point. So, I guess I’m willing.” 

 

Mikey wrapped an arm around Dylan, pulled him in close. “Someday, everyone will be able to be out and it will be okay.” 

 

“Sounds like a long way away,” Dylan said. 

 

“I know, babe,” Mikey told him. It wasn’t comforting because of what Mikey was saying. It was comforting because Mikey was there. Because he smelled like that weird coconut natural deodorant he’d bought off Instagram, and he tugged on Dylan’s ear lobe to fill the gap of the words he didn’t have to say. Because he wrapped the two of them up together in his comforter and didn’t try to fix anything. He was just there. Just Mikey. 

 

\---

 

In a fit of emotion, of missing each other, of the end of the year coming up quickly, or change happening everywhere, Connor convinced Dylan to come with him to Vegas. Dylan had never been to Vegas before, and even though it would be a short trip, Connor eluded to fucking him good in an expensive hotel room, and Dylan felt pretty  _ why the fuck not _ about most things at that point. 

 

He’d flown in separately since he wasn’t employed by...anyone...anymore, and got to the hotel room before Connor. Connor had put Dylan’s name on his room too, and he hadn’t been lying. It was huge. And like, gilded. 

 

Dylan flopped down on the bed, a king like theirs, but fancier. Taller. 

 

They were there early in the morning, and Dylan knew from Connor’s texts after their plane landed that they were almost to the hotel, and that Connor was grumpy.

 

When Connor walked in, Dylan was on his stomach on the bed, daytime TV on in the background. Connor's face was stormy like it had been for what felt like months, but what made it okay was the smile that appeared when Connor saw Dylan there. 

 

“Seriously,” Connor said. “Every road trip. You should come on every road trip.” 

 

Dylan just rolled his eyes against how pleased he was whenever Connor said shit like that. Connor climbed up next to him. They didn’t have enough time to actually do anything, but they made out on the bed for ten minutes until Connor looked a little too wrecked to go to morning skate. 

 

“Oh, fuck,” Connor said, looking at his watch. 

 

“You have some time,” Dylan assured him. 

 

“No, I—can you show me how to make a boomerang?” Connor asked “I know that’s not your job anymore, but I don’t know how to do it, and it’s due to Biosteel, and—”

 

Dylan laughed. Elite PR had someone stepping in for Dylan’s job for the last few weeks of the season, and it was weird, watching Connor navigate that new relationship. “Yeah, baby,” he said, because he would never deny Connor anything. 

 

They’d survived March, but it had been hard. The hope for the playoffs was over. They had this weird photo of the two of them Connor had artfully brushed off in a post-game interview that was still kind of hanging over their heads, and Dylan wished the Oilers were going to the playoffs so there would be a distraction from it. And because he loved Connor, and that’s what Connor wanted. 

 

Connor described what Biosteel wanted. A shot of one of their drink mixes in Connor’s gym bag, him unzipping the flap of the bag to show it off. 

 

“I hate the watermelon kind,” Connor pouted, but he opened his gym bag and arranged the drink mix, and Dylan showed Connor the boomerang setting in Instagram Stories. It took all of ten seconds. Connor posted it directly to his Instagram. His first instagram post or story he made and posted himself in years. 

 

The rest of the day was a blur. After skate they took a nap together before Connor was due for team dinner. Dylan headed over to the arena, planning on eating there. He wore an Oilers zip up, and Connor had gotten him a good seat, right on the center line halfway up the lower bowl, facing the player benches so he could see Connor. 

 

The game didn’t go the way they had wanted it to. That was kind of the story for most of the season, even when they did get glimmers of hope. Connor had still gone into it with a determined mind, always ready to show everyone what he had. That was just Connor. Dylan’s heart hurt for him when games ended this way. 

 

The walk back to his hotel was short and crowded, so many people out at every hour of the day. It would be a while before Connor was done. Dylan wandered the strip a bit, people watched. It seemed like everyone had a drink in their hand. The strip was bright and loud and everyone was happy. Dylan knew that when Connor got back to the hotel room, he wouldn’t be happy. 

 

He stopped at a little convenience shop and bought an overpriced package of licorice. He’d at least tuck it into Connor’s bag for the flight home the next day. 

 

Dylan was watching a movie in bed when Connor got back. He looked awful, frustrated, angry, more worked up than ever. 

 

“Wow that was the worst night of the season,” Connor said, matter-of-factly, voice even. 

 

“It wasn’t that bad of a game,” Dylan said, though he knew there was nothing he could say to make Connor feel better in that moment. Connor saw the licorice on the table by the TV and smiled a little, not reaching his eyes. 

 

Connor shook his head. “Not the game. I mean, obviously the game fucking sucked. But after. One of the reporters asked how I felt about being mathematically eliminated—”

 

“Oh, shit, Con, I didn’t realize—”

 

“Yeah, I didn’t either.” Connor raised his eyebrows in annoyance. “And then they asked when we found out, and I said just then, and then kind of spiraled. I was. Terse. I could hear my tone of voice, I just couldn’t stop myself.” 

 

“C’mere,” Dylan said, climbing out of bed and pulling Connor into a hug. “I’m so sorry.” 

 

“Gonna hear about that from just about everyone tomorrow.” 

 

“Fuck everyone,” Dylan said. He wrapped his arms tighter around Connor, felt Connor give him his weight, sagging against him. “Alright, suit off.” 

 

Connor nodded, took one more moment tucked against Dylan, and then pushed away to get undressed. 

 

“What will make you feel better?” Dylan asked. “A shower? Bath? Backrub? Sex?” He saw Connor perk up at the mention of sex. Dylan wasn’t shocked, but he was a little surprised. Sometimes after shit like this, Connor was too grumpy for sex. “Really? You want it now?” 

 

“Yeah,” Connor said. “Is there any better distraction in the entire world? How often do I get this on the road? You here with me?” He cupped Dylan’s cheek with a big warm hand, suit stripped off and put away nicely because even in his misery he had to follow suit rules. Dylan wrapped an arm around Connor’s waist, rested their foreheads together. 

 

“What if you fucked my face?” Dylan said. That was still new to their repertoire. It was maybe not the best idea since Connor was so emotional, but Dylan wanted him out of his head, wanted him focused on something that wasn’t hockey, and the mix of chasing pleasure and making sure not to hurt Dylan wasn’t a bad idea. 

 

“Yes, yes, yes,” Connor said, kissing Dylan rough and sloppy. Dylan smiled into the kiss, knowing that he’d made the right call. Connor tossed pillows down on the floor for Dylan’s knees. There were more than he needed, but Dylan had appreciated how caring Connor was when they had tried this before, and was glad it was Connor’s mind now too. 

 

They kissed for another couple minutes, their mouths sliding wet against each other, before Dylan dropped to his knees. He peeled Connor’s underwear down and opened his mouth, waiting. 

 

“You’re kidding me that’s so hot,” Connor said, taking his dick in his hand and setting the tip on Dylan’s bottom lip. Dylan’s tongue darted out to lick it, and it devolved from there. 

 

They had a system, Dylan’s hand on Connor’s thigh always. If he took his hand away, Connor stopped. 

 

Dylan was getting better and better at allowing Connor to breach his throat, and Connor was gentle, both his hands holding Dylan’s head like a treasure instead of some object to fuck. Connor’s thrusts were cautious at first, but he gained speed, gained confidence as Dylan went longer and longer without taking his hand off Connor’s thigh. 

 

When Connor came, he did it messy and all over Dylan’s face, then dropped to his knees too to lick most of it off. It didn’t do much for Dylan, but that was okay. Connor loved it, and that night, Connor needed it. 

 

He nuzzled into Dylan’s neck, palpably happier after an orgasm. Dylan reached a hand up to scratch through the back of Connor’s hair, keeping him close. Dylan was hard, but it wasn’t urgent. He was content to just stay there with Connor for a bit. 

 

“Thank you,” Connor said into Dylan’s neck. Then he pulled them both up to their feet and directed Dylan to lay on the bed. He stripped Dylan’s pajamas off and settled between his legs in order to return the favor. 

 

After, Dylan gathered Connor into his arms, let Connor hide his face in Dylan’s neck. They were quiet for long enough that Dylan thought Connor might have fallen asleep. But then he spoke. 

 

“I knew we weren’t going to make it, but hearing it, knowing it was official—” Connor paused, and Dylan gave him space to come up with something to say. “Especially on camera. I felt like an idiot.” 

 

“If anyone gives you grief, I’ll fight them,” Dylan said. It made Connor laugh at little, and that’s all Dylan thought he could probably hope for. 

 

“I just want to play in the playoffs more than anything. We worked the entire year, and it’s just another year for nothing.” 

 

“It’s been a rough season.” 

 

“It’s been the worst fucking season,” Connor agreed. 

 

“It’s almost over,” Dylan said. Dylan promised. 

 

—

 

The last week was a blur. 

 

Between locker clean out and packing up for the summer, it didn’t feel like they had any downtime. Dylan was excited to be going home, excited that when he got there, he’d be bringing his bags straight to Connor’s condo. Connor had put the hard sell on him to live with him in Toronto, and Dylan had let him. It felt nice to know that Connor wanted to be with him. Felt nice to hear him affirm that. 

 

Dylan was in love with the condo. Connor had a huge balcony, but the condo itself was modest. Dylan liked the small space. Liked that Connor was the one who pulled out Dylan’s family photos and put them up around their place. 

 

“That’s so cheesy, babe,” Dylan said, watching Connor tuck Dylan’s framed photos into a display of his own photos in the living room. Dylan was still trying to figure out the strange blown glass art...thing that Connor had been gifted for Christmas sitting on the mantle by the photos. Dylan was on the couch, wedged into the corner of the sectional, feet up on the cushions.  

 

“What? It’s not cheesy at all. I’m moving you in. You’re being moved in.” 

 

“I see that.” He couldn’t help the smile on his face. Connor’s condo had been pretty empty when they got back the day before. Connor left most of his clothes in Edmonton—especially his suits. They each had one on them just in case, but that meant there was ample dresser and closet space for Dylan to take over. Today, they were settling in. Distracting themselves from the fact that they were going to Connor’s folks’ house for dinner. Dylan was terrified. Connor was nervous too.

 

“You know I would do anything for you, right?” Dylan asked. 

 

Connor nodded. “Like moving in with me even though I won’t let you pay rent.” 

 

“For example,” Dylan agreed. Dylan didn’t have a job yet, and he wasn’t sure when he’d be getting one. It seemed more important in the moment to be with Connor. And since Connor split time between Toronto and Edmonton, having a location-specific job would be tough. He had no idea what he was going to do, but he still had savings for the time being. And he knew in a worst-case scenario, Connor would buy him food. 

 

“Another good example is walking into a lion’s den for you tonight,” Dylan continued. He had known about this dinner for days, and it just kept getting more and more terrifying. 

 

“Well my mom is really excited to meet you. And Cam,” Connor said, focusing on the positives. 

 

“And your dad hates me,” Dylan said, finishing up the summary. 

 

“He doesn’t hate you, he just thinks—“

 

“That I’m hoodwinking you into being gay, and that if I hadn’t moved into your house you would be basically married to a woman with a child on the way or something.” Bryan hadn’t said  _ exactly _ that, but it had apparently been heavily implied that Connor’s current gayness was all Dylan’s fault. 

 

“He’ll figure out pretty quick that you’re not going anywhere, and I’m not going to wake up attracted to women someday.” 

 

“I’m not going anywhere?” Dylan said, smiling up at Connor, still fidgeting with family photos on a side table. 

 

“I mean, you’re not right?” 

 

“I’m in this for the long haul, yeah,” Dylan said. One thing they seemed to have in common was their mutual anxiety about being left behind. Connor thinking that Dylan will want to stay in Toronto after the summer, Dylan thinking that Connor won’t want him anymore once the season starts up again. It was verbal reassurance after verbal reassurance. 

 

“Then maybe dinner will be awkward, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s us. It’s Connor and Dylan versus everyone, right?” 

 

Dylan nodded. “The pictures look really nice, actually.” 

 

“Yeah. They do.” 

 

—

 

Apparently, Connor’s favorite meal is chicken with this crunchy coating that Kelly apparently makes out of cornflakes and a can of soup. There are little red potatoes and green beans, and Dylan has a legitimate glass of milk in front of his place setting. 

 

“Dylan, we are so happy you were able to come to dinner with us tonight,” Kelly said, putting a roll on his plate, then reaching into the basket again to place a second one next to the first. Connor just took the second one, waved off his mom trying to dish him up more food. Putting more food on peoples’ plates apparently is her nervous tick. 

 

“I’m really happy to be here tonight,” Dylan said, smiling at Kelly, turning his gaze to Cam across the table from him and Connor, who returned his smile too. 

 

“Someone has to keep this kid in line, right?” Cam said, clearly joking around, giving his kid brother a hard time. 

 

“You know how wild I am,” Connor said. He bridged the space between him and Dylan in order to put his hand on Dylan’s thigh, give him an appreciative smile. Dylan could barely look at Connor though, because Bryan McDavid was sitting at the head of the table, clearly visible whenever Dylan turned his gaze that way. Dylan was grateful Kelly had put Connor between the two of them. 

 

Bryan just looked at Dylan’s thigh, the hand Connor had on it. He huffed. 

 

“I think I’m done here,” he said, shaking his head and getting up from the table. 

 

“Dad, are you serious?” Cam asked in disbelief. 

 

“I won’t entertain this. You know he just wants something from you. Got used to that cushy life in your house. Wants to use this as a stepping stone.” Connor winced, his grip on Dylan’s thigh tightening. “Connor, you’re a smart kid. I can’t believe you would fall for this. That you would risk your career for this.” 

 

His dad stormed off. 

 

“Dylan, sweetheart, I am so sorry,” Kelly said. “He promised he was going to be open-minded.” 

 

“Mom, c’mon,” Connor said. Dylan wasn’t all that happy with what Connor’s dad had said about him, but he was livid about what he said about Connor. “We both knew he was going to do that.” 

 

Connor looked so disappointed. Dylan wanted to wrap his arms around him, hold him tight. But he didn’t feel comfortable doing that here. 

 

“Well, I just wanted to have a nice dinner,” she said. She looked like she was going to cry. 

 

“It’s fine, Momma,” Connor said. “But we’re going to go.” 

 

“Dylan, it was good to meet you,” Cam said. The McDavids that hadn’t stormed off walked Dylan and Connor to the door, gave them both big hugs. 

 

They were quiet in the car driving out of Connor’s neighborhood. 

 

“That fucking sucked,” Connor said, pulling to the side of a quiet street and throwing the car in park. 

 

“Yes it did,” Dylan agreed. He felt raw inside. He knew that his own parents had framed the selfie of the two of them Dylan had sent them, knew that his mom had Connor’s jersey ready to be signed when they went for dinner there the next day. Knew that his dad didn’t care that he was gay. 

 

But Dylan had also been out since high school. His parents hadn’t been surprised by Connor. 

 

“What if you invited Mikey over? To our place?” 

 

“Tonight?” 

 

“Yeah. I want to meet him. If you think it would go better than that dinner just did. Turn the night around.” 

 

“Yeah, Mikey is so excited to meet you I can’t even explain,” Dylan said, smiling. He didn’t think he would have smiled at all after a dinner like that, but of course Connor figured out the one thing that would make him happy. “I’ll call him?” 

 

Connor nodded, and Dylan dialed Mikey. 

 

“Hey buddy,” Mikey said, bright and happy. Dylan was always happy to hear Mikey’s voice. 

 

“Hey, I know this is last-minute, but do you want to meet Connor? Like, right now? Can you come over?” 

 

“Um, yes and yes, if I can bring Nate,” Mikey said. He and Nate were apparently  _ official _ , and Dylan couldn’t be happier. 

 

“Yeah,” Dylan said, and the agreed on time frames to give Connor and Dylan enough time to get back to Toronto, and Dylan sent over their address. 

 

When he looked over at Connor, Dylan was surprised to see him smiling. 

 

“What’s that for?” Dylan asked. He knew Connor. He knew that Connor was good at dwelling on things. He thought for sure he’d be grumpy for a while after a dinner like that. 

 

“I just love you. I love you so much, I can’t even explain it. And I’m really excited to see your best friend and his boyfriend.” 

 

“And your dad?” 

 

“And my dad will get the fuck over it. Or he won’t. And that’s not something I can control, so I’m not going to let it ruin my time here with you.” It sounded very mature. It kind of sounded like he’d googled what to do when your dad can’t accept your boyfriend. And maybe he had. Or maybe he talked to his sports therapist about more than just sports. Dylan would find out if Connor decided he wanted to tell him. 

 

“I love you too, for the record,” Dylan said, reaching out to take Connor’s hand from the steering wheel. It didn’t matter. They were still parked. “Should we get snacks on the way home?”

 

“You’re just a stomach with legs, I swear to god,” Connor laughed. 

 

“I’ll buy you licorice,” Dylan said. 

 

“Sold,” Connor agreed, giving Dylan’s hand a squeeze before putting his car back in drive. 

 

The four of them put on a dumb movie and Mikey used his tried and true strategy of making friends what was based mostly on throwing popcorn at them, so Connor had a lap full of it that Dylan was dutifully eating. 

 

Dylan liked Nate too. Liked the way he offered his Cool Ranch Doritos to Mikey before he ate any of them himself. The tender way he looked at Mikey, laughed at his dumb jokes while also spending most of the night trying to make Mikey laugh too. 

 

Somehow, Connor had figured out the exact way to turn their night around. Dylan relaxed on the couch next to Connor, let Connor wrap his arm around his shoulders. His best friend and the boy he loved were in the condo Dylan was trying to make feel like home. Maybe it was a good day after all. 

 

—

 

“What do you think about that CCM shoot,” Dylan asked. He was wandering the first floor with his laptop in hand, trying to get his bearings in Edmonton again.  “It starts at five in the fucking morning. You wanna see if we can reschedule?” 

 

“Nah,” Connor said, from the couch. Connor had settled back into their house basically upon reentry, dumping their bags in the master bedroom and sticking himself face-first in his pillows. His bed in Toronto did technically belong to him, but his bed in Edmonton was  _ his bed.  _ Dylan was happy to see how excited Connor was to be back in Edmonton. A new season. A fresh start. Another 82 games to prove himself in. He’d said a million times over the summer that he didn’t care about getting a single point himself that year, as long as his team made playoffs. That this was their year. “We can just take a nap after, yeah?” 

 

“Yeah, baby,” Dylan said, settling on the couch by Connor’s head. He closed his laptop and let Connor scootch until his head was in Dylan’s lap, a silent request for a scalp massage. 

 

He sank his fingers into Connor’s hair. It was getting long again, but Connor had a haircut with Nicki scheduled. Dylan would enjoy it while he could. 

 

With Elite PR out of the picture, Connor had gotten a middle-of-summer perfect-clarity idea that Dylan should just take over. Dylan already had relationships with CCM and Canadian Tire and BioSteel and Adidas. And honestly, working with Connor’s partnerships was the part of his job he enjoyed the most. It made sense. It made Dylan feel like Connor didn’t have a PR team. It made him feel like he and Connor were a team. 

 

“And next week is BioSteel camp,” Dylan said, reminding Connor. They’d cut their summer short to settle back in Edmonton before the season got into full swing. Coming back to Edmonton had felt a little like coming home to Dylan. He knew it felt that way for Connor. 

 

Connor would start another season with a very heavy C on his jersey. But he would also start another season with Dylan at his side, with Leon on his wing, with Darnell backing him up. 

 

Slowly, Connor would get all of Edmonton behind him. He was so determined this year. Determined that the Oilers would make the playoffs. Determined that he’d have something to say about it. Dylan didn’t have a single doubt in the world. 

 

And until then, Dylan would just sink into this couch and give Connor his eight-millionth scalp massage. Because everything was going to be fine. 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed (lol) that I skipped Connor's knee injury. It felt like...too close to reality to write about it? And I also want to live in a fictional world where that never happened to him, because I love him and I want nice things for him. So. There's that. 
> 
> ANYWAY. You can find my fic blog on Tumblr [here](http://betsywritesfic.tumblr.com), and my personal blog (mostly hockey...and honestly a lot of 1D lately I'm not sorry) [here](http://thewestishharpooners.tumblr.com) :)

**Author's Note:**

> Huge shoutout to everyone on tumblr who has supported me through a lot of complaining as this fic just kept getting longer and longer. I love everyone who has cheered me on, dropped me asks, liked my posts, whatever. Knowing that I'm not sending this fic into the void made a huge difference. 
> 
> If you want, you can find my fic blog on Tumblr [here](http://betsywritesfic.tumblr.com), and my personal blog (mostly hockey) [here](http://thewestishharpooners.tumblr.com) :)


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